Sustainable Smart Grids, Emergence of a Policy Framework

Brown, Marilyn A.; Zhou, Shan

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0851-3_767

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…During the first period, smart grids were still an evolving topic in the context of smart cities. There were major barriers to the development of smart grids (see Brown and Zhou 2013 for a comprehensive review), policy issues related to sustainable smart grids (see Brown and Zhou 2012 for an early policy framework), and significant challenges for their implementation that needed to be addressed in the early 2010s. This included enhancing efficiency and renewables with smart grids and policies (Brown 2014 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmentally sustainable smart cities and their converging AI, IoT, and big data technologies and solutions: an integrated approach to an extensive literature review

et al. 2023

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There have recently been intensive efforts aimed at addressing the challenges of environmental degradation and climate change through the applied innovative solutions of AI, IoT, and Big Data. Given the synergistic potential of these advanced technologies, their convergence is being embraced and leveraged by smart cities in an attempt to make progress toward reaching the environmental targets of sustainable development goals under what has been termed “environmentally sustainable smart cities.” This new paradigm of urbanism represents a significant research gap in and of itself. To fill this gap, this study explores the key research trends and driving factors of environmentally sustainable smart cities and maps their thematic evolution. Further, it examines the fragmentation, amalgamation, and transition of their underlying models of urbanism as well as their converging AI, IoT, and Big Data technologies and solutions. It employs and combines bibliometric analysis and evidence synthesis methods. A total of 2,574 documents were collected from the Web of Science database and compartmentalized into three sub-periods: 1991–2015, 2016–2019, and 2020–2021. The results show that environmentally sustainable smart cities are a rapidly growing trend that markedly escalated during the second and third periods—due to the acceleration of the digitalization and decarbonization agendas—thanks to COVID-19 and the rapid advancement of data-driven technologies. The analysis also reveals that, while the overall priority research topics have been dynamic over time—some AI models and techniques and environmental sustainability areas have received more attention than others. The evidence synthesized indicates that the increasing criticism of the fragmentation of smart cities and sustainable cities, the widespread diffusion of the SDGs agenda, and the dominance of advanced ICT have significantly impacted the materialization of environmentally sustainable smart cities, thereby influencing the landscape and dynamics of smart cities. It also suggests that the convergence of AI, IoT, and Big Data technologies provides new approaches to tackling the challenges of environmental sustainability. However, these technologies involve environmental costs and pose ethical risks and regulatory conundrums. The findings can inform scholars and practitioners of the emerging data-driven technology solutions of smart cities, as well as assist policymakers in designing and implementing responsive environmental policies.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmentally sustainable smart cities and their converging AI, IoT, and big data technologies and solutions: an integrated approach to an extensive literature review

et al. 2023

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A Holistic Review of Smart Grid Contribution Toward Energy Sustainability

Khan

Kalam

2021

Energy Systems in Electrical Engineering

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Environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities: applied innovative solutions for energy efficiency, pollution reduction, and urban metabolism

2020

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The IoT and big data technologies have become essential to the functioning of both smart cities and sustainable cities, and thus, urban operational functioning and planning are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism. This offers the prospect of building models of smart sustainable cities functioning in real time from routinely sensed data. This in turn allows to monitor, understand, analyze, and plan such cities to improve their energy efficiency and environmental health in real time thanks to new urban intelligence functions as an advanced form of decision support. However, prior studies tend to deal largely with data-driven technologies and solutions in the realm of smart cities, mostly in relation to economic and social aspects, leaving important questions involving the underlying substantive and synergistic effects on environmental sustainability barely explored to date. These issues also apply to sustainable cities, especially eco-cities. Therefore, this paper investigates the potential and role of data-driven smart solutions in improving and advancing environmental sustainability in the context of smart cities as well as sustainable cities, under what can be labeled “environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities.” To illuminate this emerging urban phenomenon, a descriptive/illustrative case study is adopted as a qualitative research methodology§ to examine and compare Stockholm and Barcelona as the ecologically and technologically leading cities in Europe respectively. The results show that smart grids, smart meters, smart buildings, smart environmental monitoring, and smart urban metabolism are the main data-driven smart solutions applied for improving and advancing environmental sustainability in both eco-cities and smart cities. There is a clear synergy between such solutions in terms of their interaction or cooperation to produce combined effects greater than the sum of their separate effects—with respect to the environment. This involves energy efficiency improvement, environmental pollution reduction, renewable energy adoption, and real-time feedback on energy flows, with high temporal and spatial resolutions. Stockholm takes the lead over Barcelona as regards the best practices for environmental sustainability given its long history of environmental work, strong environmental policy, progressive environmental performance, high environmental standards, and ambitious goals. It also has, like Barcelona, a high level of the implementation of applied data-driven technology solutions in the areas of energy and environment. However, the two cities differ in the nature of such implementation. We conclude that city governments do not have a unified agenda as a form of strategic planning, and data-driven decisions are unique to each city, so are environmental challenges. Big data are the answer, but each city sets its own questions based on what characterize it in terms of visions, policies, strategies, pathways, and priorities.

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Sustainable Smart Grids, Emergence of a Policy Framework

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Environmentally sustainable smart cities and their converging AI, IoT, and big data technologies and solutions: an integrated approach to an extensive literature review

Environmentally sustainable smart cities and their converging AI, IoT, and big data technologies and solutions: an integrated approach to an extensive literature review

A Holistic Review of Smart Grid Contribution Toward Energy Sustainability

Environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities: applied innovative solutions for energy efficiency, pollution reduction, and urban metabolism

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