JPI Urban Europe/NSFC: Socio-Techno-Economic Pathways for sustainable Urban energy develoPment

包括中国在内的发展中国家的快速城市化带来了严重的环境和社会问题。在欧盟，城市容纳了超过70%的人口，城市系统面临着类似的挑战，必须应对物理、监管和社会基础设施中强大的内在惰性，这使得向可持续发展的过渡具有挑战性。经济转型和气候变化背景下的可持续城市发展需要以城市能源系统的转型为基础。根本问题是，高效、清洁和有弹性的城市能源系统的最佳结构是什么？可持续城市能源系统的设计和运营是一项复杂的任务，因为它不仅依赖于技术创新，而且还依赖于政策制定、市场设计和商业案例。城市系统的快速电气化和数字化导致了多个部门之间的密切联系，既有积极的，也有消极的。同时，成功的城市能源转型也不可能孤立地实现。城市之间以及城市与国家之间的协调是必要的。最后但并非最不重要的一点是，作为城市系统的基本要素，市民将在这种转变中发挥核心作用。通过允许公民直接参与创建解决方案，可能会导致对此类服务的更快和更好的接受，最终用户获得更大的赋权和主人翁意识。然而，缺乏量化证据来帮助理事机构和政策制定者支持以公民为中心的方法。在这一背景下，该项目汇集了欧盟和中国在经济、社会科学和工程学方面的专家，制定了一个全面的评估框架，以调查实现高效、清洁和有弹性的城市能源系统的最佳社会-技术-经济路径。该项目涵盖多个利益攸关方(理事机构、企业和公民)、多个部门(电力、天然气、交通和供暖/制冷)、多空间层面(国家、城市和社区)和多时间尺度(长期规划、短期运营和实时控制)。重点是从技术、市场、法规和政策等方面找出障碍和潜在的解决方案。欧盟和中国的城市具有显著的特点，允许推测研究发现超出了开展研究的地理区域。

The rapid urbanisation in developing counties including China has created substantial environmental and social problems. In the EU, cities accommodate over 70% of the population and urban systems face similar challenges and must deal with a strong built-in inertia within physical, regulatory and societal infrastructure that makes the transition to sustainable development challenging. Sustainable urban development in the context of economic transformation and climate change needs to be underpinned by the transformation of urban energy systems. The fundamental question is what is the optimal structure for an efficient, clean and resilient urban energy system? The design and operation of sustainable urban energy system is a complex task, since it relies not only on technology innovation, but also on policy making, market design and business cases. The fast electrification and digitalization of urban system leads to close links among multiple sectors, both positively and negatively. At the same time, the successful urban energy transformation cannot be achieved in an isolated way. The coordination between cities as well as between the city and the nation is required. Last but not least, as the fundamental element of the urban system, citizens will play a central role in such transformation. By allowing citizens to directly be engaged in creating the solutions, it may lead to a faster and improved acceptance of such services, with end users gaining a greater sense of empowerment and ownership. However, there is lack of quantitative evidence to inform the governing bodies and policy makers to support the citizen-centric approaches.In this context, this project brings together the experts from the EU and China in economics, social science and engineering to develop a comprehensive assessment framework to investigate the optimal Socio-Techno-Economic pathways towards an efficient, clean and resilient urban energy system. The project covers multiple stakeholders (governing body, enterprises and citizens), multiple sectors (electricity, gas, transport and heating/cooling), multiple spatial levels (national, city and community) and multiple time-scales (long-term planning, short-term operation and real-time control). The focus is to identify the barriers and potential solutions from the technology, market, regulation and policy. Cities in EU and China with distinguished features allow speculating the finding of the research beyond the geographical areas where it is carried out.