How to integrate renewable energies in European cities
Renewable energy use goes hand in hand with improvement of quality of living within the urban context, according to the editors of a new publication detailing a number of EU-funded research projects focussing on how to integrate renewable energies in European cities. The publication aims to provide an informative catalogue of some 23 projects undertaken within the framework of the European Commission's 'REBUILD-Rebuilding the cities of tomorrow' initiative. Some examples of the topics of these projects include green building in Dublin; office building in central Athens; and low emission electrical minibus systems in Florence. All the projects described in the publication are selected design cases of sustainable rebuilding of cities including the use of renewable energy and/or very advanced energy saving measures. 'The design cases were realised in the 1990s and cover five different categories of buildings which differ by building use (residential, mixed, office, leisure and industrial), meta-buildings, city quarter developments, a bio-climatic park, and city traffic concepts,' explain the editors. 'The selected cases show that the application of renewable energies in the urban environment is not limited to putting some solar panels on the roofs of single family houses, but offers a large variety of very interesting, technically and aesthetically convincing solutions for renovating and retrofitting buildings and urban ensembles, even those with historic value.'