About this Research Topic
Energy sustainability is one of the most important and challenging issues in the development of sustainable cities. The promotion of energy sustainability has been highlighted in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This has been endorsed by more than 190 countries, specifically the commitment to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” (SDG 7) by 2030. However, evidence shows that our energy infrastructures can be very vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters or a global pandemic. During the unprecedented development of cities and the building of energy infrastructures to support them, we are facing great challenges in realizing both sustainable and resilient energy infrastructures that do minimal harm to our ecosystems.
Nowadays, cities are highly globalized. Urban energy infrastructures not only include local electricity transmissions and household end uses, but also energy supply chains beyond urban boundaries to boost the growth and development of our cities. There is a strong and emerging trend focusing on the evaluation of urban energy infrastructures across the spatial scales of cities, regions, countries and the world. This Research Topic aims to gather powerful approaches, integrated indicators and promising applications to improve the sustainability (e.g. carbon efficiency in the energy mix) and resilience (e.g. safe supply during a pandemic like COVID-19) of our energy infrastructures. These include power plants, transmission networks and end-use buildings. By grabbing this hot-button issue in the frontier of energy studies, we believe this Research Topic can stimulate thoughts to address the major challenges our energy infrastructures are facing. We also hope to globally enlighten researchers, practitioners and decision-makers to move towards the building of a better urban energy infrastructure system in a post-COVID-19 world.
This Research Topic will focus on the studies and policy discussions of sustainable and resilient urban energy infrastructures, including (but not limited to) the following subjects:
• Urban fuel and electricity supply infrastructures
• Urban energy use from upstream supply chains
• Sustainable household energy infrastructures
• Environmental footprints of urban energy infrastructures
• Resilient urban energy supply in front of a pandemic
• Building a more robust energy infrastructure system in the new world
• New approaches and ideas to increase the resilience of energy network distributed in cities
• Assessments of social and technical transition of urban energy infrastructure in a changing world
• Systemic analyses of how to build an energy infrastructure system in various cities that are both efficient and resilience
Nowadays, cities are highly globalized. Urban energy infrastructures not only include local electricity transmissions and household end uses, but also energy supply chains beyond urban boundaries to boost the growth and development of our cities. There is a strong and emerging trend focusing on the evaluation of urban energy infrastructures across the spatial scales of cities, regions, countries and the world. This Research Topic aims to gather powerful approaches, integrated indicators and promising applications to improve the sustainability (e.g. carbon efficiency in the energy mix) and resilience (e.g. safe supply during a pandemic like COVID-19) of our energy infrastructures. These include power plants, transmission networks and end-use buildings. By grabbing this hot-button issue in the frontier of energy studies, we believe this Research Topic can stimulate thoughts to address the major challenges our energy infrastructures are facing. We also hope to globally enlighten researchers, practitioners and decision-makers to move towards the building of a better urban energy infrastructure system in a post-COVID-19 world.
This Research Topic will focus on the studies and policy discussions of sustainable and resilient urban energy infrastructures, including (but not limited to) the following subjects:
• Urban fuel and electricity supply infrastructures
• Urban energy use from upstream supply chains
• Sustainable household energy infrastructures
• Environmental footprints of urban energy infrastructures
• Resilient urban energy supply in front of a pandemic
• Building a more robust energy infrastructure system in the new world
• New approaches and ideas to increase the resilience of energy network distributed in cities
• Assessments of social and technical transition of urban energy infrastructure in a changing world
• Systemic analyses of how to build an energy infrastructure system in various cities that are both efficient and resilience
Keywords: Energy Sustainability, Resilience, Urban Fuel, Electricity Supply, Household Energy, Upstream Supply Chain, Urban Energy Infrastructure, Energy Network, Efficiency
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
