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36 TOPOS / 03 / 2012

Sustainable energy landscape for Arnhem

The global perspective of climate change and the depletion of fossil fuels enhance the necessity of an energy transition strategy. Within this context the municipality of Arnhem joined the Kwh/m2 Studio proposed by Dirk Sijmons (H+N+S Landscape Architects) in partnership with Wageningen UR and TU Delft focusing on the question what impact the reduction of CO2 emissions by shifting to renewable energy sources has on special planning? Therefore, two Master Students of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning, Taícia Marques and Jaime Gómez, were supervised by Sven Stremke (WUR) and the Kwh/m2 Studio experts in order to design how a sustainable (energy) landscape for the city of Arnhem might look like.

IntroductionSince the discovery of fossil fuels as a main source to generate energy, the landscape has been transformed and shaped in order to accommodate the necessary infrastructures from the extraction of the source until the delivery of energy to the final consumer. Large amounts of energy are spent on its transportation and conservation (Steiner, 2002). The generation of energy by non-renewable sources is also responsible for the largest amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the planet, with special attention to carbon dioxide (CO2) (MacKay, 2009). As a result, the European Union countries, together with the G8 (the eight largest economies in the world), established a target to reduce at least 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050 when compared with 1990 (European Commission, 2011).

In The Netherlands the strategy to achieve this goal has been re-defined: each municipality should consider the challenges of CO2 reduction and energy transition on their agendas. Within this, we as Landscape Architects had the objective to design a sustainable

Jaime GómezMSc Landscape architecture

Taícia MarquesMSc Landscape architecturetaiciamarques@yahoo.com

(energy) landscape for Arnhem. In other words, to design what the city would look like when energy transition and CO2 neutrality are considered. The objective was to propose measures to make Arnhem less dependent on fossil fuels and more resilient during an energy crises period rather than focus on the goal to be fully self-sufficient (Dobbelsteen, 2012).

The design process was guided by the integrative energy vision of the “Five-step approach” proposed by Stremke (2010): (1) landscape analysis and energy inventory; (2) influence of near future developments on energy transition; (3) analysis of two socio-economic scenarios (possible futures) in the context of Arnhem; (4) design of two visions (desired futures) based on environmental concepts such as biorhythm and food chain; (5) intervention. As a conclusion we compared the two visions in order to define robust interventions. Moreover, the perspectives of policy makers, researchers and landscape architects were accessed. Each of the steps will be described below.

Figure 1. Better potential areas to generate, store and save energy.

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