Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) in urban energy systems requires the implementation of alternative infrastructure configurations across different geographical, technical and social scales. Furthermore, alternative configurations may improve systems resilience and democratization of service provision.

Abstract

Applying behaviour change methods to reduce home energy consumption has resulted in varying outcomes and also conservation effects that were short-lived. Some of the more promising treatments included In Home Energy Displays (IHDs) and home energy bills with comparisons to unknown others - for individual homes. In contrast, so-called collective “energy communities” reduce individual energy consumption and report other benefits such as group cohesion and community building.

The city of Melbourne is located in a highly productive agricultural region with the capacity to meet approximately 41% of the city population’s food needs. Melbourne’s “foodbowl” is an important building block in a resilient and sustainable food system for this rapidly growing city. This article presents some findings of the Foodprint Melbourne initiative led by University of Melbourne researchers who worked in partnership with local governments to investigate the significance of periurban food production to the city’s long-term food security and the regional economy.

We are in the final years of the critical decade,4 the period in which our actions to reduce carbon emissions will determine whether we succeed globally to limit temperature rise to less than 2 degrees. At the same time, more than 50% of the global population now live in urban areas, which is expected...

Australian cities need to reduce their emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, potentially profoundly impacting our future lifestyles.

It’s 2040. As you wake and look outside, things might not look hugely different to 2017 – there aren’t any hoverboards or sky highways – but Australian cities have managed to cut their...

Dr Andi Horvath meets Dr Seona Candy – an academic at Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, and an expert in the importance of urban green areas. As the EcoCity World Summit comes to Melbourne, Dr Candy says our focus on building resilient, sustainable ecocities of the future must focus on its socio-, ecological, and technological systems; because a city is not just about its infrastructure or its technology, it’s about its people.