There’s a quiet planning revolution taking place in Italy, Portugal, Romania and Austria. You may not have heard of it yet, but holistic integrated spatial and energy planning — known as HISEP — is helping small and and medium-sized municipalities combine liveable urban design with the clean energy transition.
7 cities and towns were chosen as pioneers: Horn and Eggenburg in Austria; Sânnicolau Mare and Lugoj in Romania; Italy’s Dolo and Castelfranco Veneto; and Fundão in Portugal. Together, they are leading the way with the help of PLENTY LIFE, a 3-year, €1.8 million EU-funded project.
The project supports cities on their journey to becoming energy-efficient, carbon neutral and climate resilient through pilot projects which focus on improving energy efficiency, switching to cleaner fuels such as biogas and hydrogen, promoting the use of locally sourced renewable energy and decarbonising heat and power plants. But what makes PLENTY LIFE different is its holistic approach which integrates human-scale urban design with the transition to clean energy.
‘It sounds complicated, but HISEP is really about considering urban land use and urban energy use together instead of separately,’ explains project coordinator Georg Neugebauer from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. ‘The spatial planning part deals with houses, factories, shops, transport and green spaces, while energy planning focuses on how energy is produced, distributed and used. HISEP helps us plan cities in a smart way where land use and energy systems fit together, while creating a better quality of life with cleaner, more efficient energy.’
‘From the start we wanted HISEP to be driven by the various stakeholders involved in urban design and energy planning, including municipal authorities, energy companies, businesses, universities and civil society organisations. Above all, it is essential to include the end-users — those who live, work and play in the cities. Cross-sectoral planning is key and everyone from energy system planners to local residents must be involved’.
Besides developing the HISEP methodology and rolling out pilot demonstrations across 7 European cities, PLENTY LIFE has also established training programmes and guidelines for policymakers, public officers and spatial planners; created a database of city case studies; and developed key indicators for clean energy transition (KICET) to track progress towards sustainable and carbon neutral cities.
PLENTY LIFE is just one of dozens of projects funded by the LIFE Clean Energy Transition (CET) sub-programme to support Europe’s transition towards an energy-efficient, climate-neutral and climate-resilient economy based on renewable energy. The project supports the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Renewable Energy Directive.