Identification of the Sustainable Wind and Solar Potential in Urban Areas Using a GIS Methodology

In recent years the publication of new legislation in the renewables sector, namely the one related to microgeneration systems, has contributed to an increase in the installation of renewable energy systems in Portugal. Nevertheless, the investment in these systems is still high and the risk of considering sites with reduced resource constitutes a barrier to the development of this sub-sector. In the sequence of the previous work developed in the wind energy planning area, a methodology to identify the sustainable wind and solar potential in urban areas was developed, in order to reduce the pre-installation costs related to a less suitable site selection, and also to identify the real potential of the urban areas. In order to do so, a geographical information system was used and a set of tools was developed. The methodology was structured to enable its replication in other geographical locations and is sufficiently interactive to allow for the variation of the main input data. A case study in two urban environments is presented in this document to illustrate the developed methodology.

A GIS Methodology for Planning Sustainable Renewable Energy Deployment in Portugal

A Geographical Information System (GIS) methodology was developed to?identify and characterize suitable areas for deploying renewable energy projects. The methodology enables to compute the sustainable renewable energy potential in an area under study and can be implemented for different spatial scales, ranging from local to national levels, while operating with different restriction layers. This GIS-based method has been successfully applied to wind energy deployment studies in Continental Portugal and other foreign countries?(e.g. Venezuela, Mozambique among others). Results from several development plans using this methodology enable to conclude it is an adequate tool for planning sustainable renewable energy deployment both for onshore and offshore regions.

Measuring the sustainable urbanization potential of cities in Northeast China

Sustainable urbanization is not only an important research topic in the field of urbanization, but also the development direction of new-type urbanization. In this paper, we construct an index system to evaluate sustainable urbanization potential with the entropy method. Results show that potential values of sustainable urbanization in most cities are not high. Cities with higher sustainable urbanization potential values are mainly located in the central part of Northeast China. Environmental potential of sustainable urbanization is the main contributor to sustainable urbanization potential in Northeast China. There is no absolute relationship between city size and potential value, large city does not always mean greater potential. Correlation analysis shows that urbanization rate cannot reflect the sustainable urbanization potential of a region. Population urbanization is not the ultimate goal of sustainable urbanization. Unilateral pursue urbanization rate cannot improve the potential of sustainable urbanization. Towards sustainable urbanization, governments in Northeast China should revitalize local economy, pay more attention to the rural areas and develop low-carbon economy or ecological economy. Finally, this paper highlights the importance of choosing more integrated methodology or new models for measuring sustainable urbanization potential in view of the shortcomings of one method.