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Urban Electrification: Knowledge Pathway Toward an

Integrated Research and Development Agenda

White Paper

Paty Romero-Lankao1,2, Alana Wilson1,8, Joshua Sperling1, Clark Miller6,

Daniel Zimny-Schmitt1, Luis Bettencourt2, Eric Wood1, Stan Young1, Matteo Muratori1, Doug Arent1, Mark O’Malley1, Benjamin Sovacool3, Marilyn Brown4, Frank Southworth4,

Morgan Bazilian5, Chris Gearhart1, Anni Beukes2, and Daniel Zünd2

We also want to thank Jacob Holden1, Andy Duval1, Clement Rames1, and Amy Allen1 for their key role in organizing the workshop, and to acknowledge the other workshop participants

for helpful feedback and discussion: Megan Day1, Elizabeth Babcock7, Michael Salisbury7, Ben Polly1, Sanjini Nanayakkara1, Samuel Booth1, John Farrel1, Doug Nychka5, Benjamin Preston9,

Soutir Bandyopadhyay5, and William Kleiber8.

1 National Renewable Energy Laboratory; 2 University of Chicago; 3 University of Sussex; 4 Georgia Institute of Technology; 5 School of Mines; 6 Arizona State University; 7 City and County of Denver; 8 University of Colorado, Boulder; 9 RAND.

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Executive Summary

This white paper is an outcome of a workshop on urban electrification*.2 It outlines a vision for advancing a research and development (R&D) agenda to thoroughly examine the characteristics and relationships among urbanization, electrification, and cities, including the imperative of shifting renewable sources for electricity. It uses a systems approach to trace current knowledge and identifies knowledge gaps on diverse and not yet connected elements of this emerging field, while calling for a more active collaboration among engineering, and physical and social sciences in the development of an integrated R&D agenda.

Urbanization and electrification are deeply transforming energy systems globally. In the United States and around the globe, cities are engines of development that spatially concentrate the critical human activities and transboundary infrastructures driving and being affected by energy generation, distribution, and use. This spatial concentration creates unique opportunities for electrification to advance multiple economic, social, and environmental goals; at the same time, it alters the distribution of risks and vulnerabilities in complex ways. Because cities are key players in this field, the choices urban actors make about how to implement electrification and achieve energy sustainability, resilience, and innovation will have tremendous implications for the future of electrification, and ultimately the sustainability of our global society.

A significant investment in an innovative and rigorous R&D agenda is needed now to examine how urbanization and electrification interact with each other and with other trends confronting cities. This agenda must include physical, engineering, behavioral, and decision-making sciences to accomplish five overarching goals:

i. Develop innovative and rigorous scientific approaches, including data, models, and tools to examine the multiscale drivers, attributes, and impacts of urban electrification

ii. Design generalizable science accurately representing socio-spatial and temporal differences across and within cities and their countries

iii. Analyze the implications of electrification across multiple sectors for the future of cities and of urbanization using projections, scenarios, and data-driven models

iv. Utilize a systems approach to analyze human behavior and decision making, together with social, economic, technologic, environmental, and governance (SETEG) conditions, defining barriers and enablers, pressures for and against energy transitions, path dependencies, and levers of change.

v. Identify and analyze the outcomes, actions, and options, to maximize potential co-benefits and minimize undesirable trade-offs.

2* This paper is an outcome of the workshop on “Urban Electrification” held April 17–18, 2019, sponsored by NREL’s Transportation and Hydrogen Systems Center and the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation of the University of Chicago. Around 30 participants were invited to create a rationale for a research and development (R&D) agenda that more comprehensively focuses on urbanization, electrification and cities. The main goals were to:

i. Analyze the state of the science and gaps in knowledge ii. Develop R&D that integrates NREL capabilities with the social science methodologies iii. Create a community of research and practice in this emerging field.

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1. Introduction Electrification and urbanization are profoundly transforming energy production and consumption systems globally, affecting the way human activities in cities relate to each other and the environment at multiple scales. Electricity has increasingly become “society’s fuel of choice,” 1 accounting for 19% of total final energy consumption today, compared to just over 15% in 2000. Depending on scenarios, electricity will likely account for between 24% and 65% of final energy use by 2040.1 Technological and market breakthroughs and disruptions in energy supplies (e.g., renewables and hydraulic fracturing technology) and in energy uses (e.g., electric vehicles [EVs] and electric heat pumps for heating) are driving electrification potential to drastically transform energy systems.

Urban populations increased from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018 and will likely reach 5.1 billion by 2030.2 The urban extent is also changing at unprecedented rates, with cities currently expanding spatially at twice their urban population growth rates.3 In fact, more urban land expansion will take place during the first three decades of the current century than all of human history.4 Urban expansion will continue to transform urban energy infrastructures and electricity grids, creating both challenges and opportunities for urban electrification, e.g., rapid growth in energy demand.

Having proven to be important agents of change globally, cities occupy a central role in enhancing productivity and addressing the quality of life and equity challenges associated with economic growth, and in societal efforts to steer electrification and energy transitions in sustainable, fair, and resilient ways.5,6 Cities globally generate about 80% of the gross domestic product (GDP), consume about 75% of global primary energy, and are the source of over 70% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.7 Cities concentrate critical human activities and infrastructures that depend on and drive energy generation, distribution, and use. At the same time, cities are vulnerable to disruptions, as numerous recent cases have demonstrated (hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans, Sandy in New York, Harvey in Houston, and Maria in Puerto Rico), and further electrification will alter those vulnerabilities in complex ways. Cities are key players in electrification and energy transitions, particularly through actions seeking to promote development and quality of life, to foster the New Urban Agenda8 and multijurisdictional decarbonization goals, such as the Paris Agreement,9 and to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy services (7); climate action (13); and inclusive urban resilience (11).10

1.1 Why urban electrification?

While traditionally electrification and urbanization have been studied separately, there are three reasons for integrating them into a new generation of urban electrification studies. The first relates to the history of deep interactions between cities and energy systems that also influence, and in some ways dictate, how cities develop in the future. In the 20th century, cities were profoundly shaped by the global oil supply chains providing them with fuel, and by the automobile. Electrification also had profound impacts on urban dynamics, such as fostering electrically powered transportation and industries; lighted downtown shopping districts for evening entertainment; the transformation of homes and offices into havens for electrical devices and consumption; the rise of 24/7/365 cultures (radio and television, nightclubs, and amusement parks); and many other changes to the social, economic, technological, environmental and governance of cities.11 Today’s automobile cities are vastly different than those that preceded them. They occupy more expansive territories; have higher rates of urban air pollution; have very different built environments (e.g., streets, buildings, and parking); and different social dynamics. Additionally, they are associated

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with incredibly high costs to municipalities of maintaining this auto-centric infrastructure and high costs to individuals for the ability to efficiently move within it. These urban changes have fed back deeply into energy systems, especially with regard to creating the expectations for scales and organization of energy demands that must now be met. Examples include the early evening electricity peak demand and the high levels of automobile transport required to move people and goods, for example from homes to work in suburban and exurban landscapes. They have also fostered the organization of the electricity sector into regional utilities frequently organized around urban areas. Noteworthy as well are the negative environmental, climate, and public health externalities that these systems have created, and which humanity is now tasked with remedying.

The second reason for the integration of urban and electrification research is how the future of cities significantly affects the future of energy demand and energy systems design, and vice versa. Only by understanding how electrification and urbanization have interacted, can researchers anticipate and inform the future of energy in cities, and do so by prioritizing alternatives such as renewable power.

The future of urbanization and electrification is likely to encounter interconnected dynamics similar to the past. For example, urban demand densities, which can range from 10 to 1,000 W/m2 in cities such as Curitiba (Brazil) and central Tokyo, respectively, have always outpaced the availability of primary energy supplies available within their boundaries, necessitating the creation of regional and global energy supply chains. Across the United States, for example, over the past half-century, cities benefited from large-scale coal mining and power plants located in rural Appalachia, in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, and on the Colorado Plateau, as well as national and international oil and gas drilling, pipelines, shipping, and refining infrastructures; nuclear generation; and hydropower. Today, coal and gas account for two-thirds of total electric generation globally, and thus remain central to today’s urban electricity systems (see Figure 1). Despite recent growth of renewables, petroleum continues to dominate energy for transportation, shipping, and freight, highlighting the dependence of cities on external energy resources. Similar patterns of connected interdependence are already happening,12 with urban sustainability initiatives favoring natural gas and renewables, and continued growth in urban electricity demand driving widespread energy development in rural landscapes. The one exception to this trend is solar photovoltaics (PV), which have the potential to deliver locally generated clean energy within cities. Although under most scenarios urban solar development is unlikely to satisfy the full demand of cities for future energy (solar PV farms can presently deliver about 4 W/m2; solar PV farms can deliver 10 W/ m2 in sunnier locations 13), they could have disruptive implications for the current organization of the electrical industry if they significantly impact energy ownership or demand. These issues will be enhanced if technological improvements in panel production continue to contribute to improvements in panel efficiency, although we still have a long way to go technologically to reach significantly higher levels of efficiency. Thus, understanding the future of cities, as well as of rural areas connected to them by energy infrastructures, requires understanding the future of energy, and vice versa.14

The third reason to focus on urbanization and electrification in a coordinated fashion is that, if shifts in urbanization and energy systems evolve independently and without coordination, they will require costly infrastructure investments and could exacerbate service disruptions and system instabilities. If these transformations are instead coordinated to take advantage of cross-cutting supply chain benefits, asset sharing, and other business trends, significant grid resilience, system reliability, and cost benefits could result. The electrification of transportation and the expansion of renewable electricity, for example, can be leveraged by the bidirectional smart charging of electric vehicles. Managing electricity

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and its uses as complementary systems could help to address the growing need for grid resilience and carbon mitigation.15

All the above means that the choices that urban governmental and private decision makers make about how to electrify energy supply and use, and how to achieve sustainability and resilience will have tremendous implications over the long term for both energy futures and the futures of urbanization.16

Figure 1: Global electricity demand by region and generation by source, 2000–20171

1.2 What are urban electrification and electric systems?

Urban systems are often defined as socio-ecological or socio-technologic systems.7,19 While this concept is useful, it may be too high of an abstraction to yield an operational understanding of lower system interactions. Therefore, we suggest to define cities as geographic areas with high concentrations of human activities and interactions inserted within multiscale, interrelated social, economic, technological, environmental and governance (SETEG) domains. 7,20–22 These domains are so interlinked that only by developing an integrated approach to examine their multiscale drivers, features and feedbacks, will we be able to understand their impacts on human and planetary wellbeing, and the options, barriers, and limits they pose to energy transitions. Urban electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, particularly in cities in advanced economies, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source.23 For cities that have not previously been fully electrified, this process includes the possibility to “leapfrog” fossil fuel-based generation and directly adopt sustainably powered electricity sources.24 Urban electric (and energy) systems are SETEG systems. As shown in Figure 2, electricity generation, transmission, and use are multiscale processes. While some urban uses of electricity (e.g., residential and commercial) take place inside the city, others (e.g., transport) take place inside and outside its boundaries. As for supply, grid-supplied electricity is often imported from outside urban areas; bulk transmission and distribution of electricity take place outside a city boundary.

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Most of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) capabilities target the technological domain (e.g., EVs and e-commerce, internet of things) and its infrastructural components, such as electricity transmission and distribution systems, the grid, transportation networks, buildings, and interconnections to the grid and charging infrastructure. The economic domain

includes the markets, the cost of technologies, the availability of fuel and any affiliated cost savings and revenues generated.23 The environmental domain includes the elements of non-human nature, studied by other U.S. National Laboratories, that affect electricity supply and are part of the fabric of cities affecting energy use (e.g., through carbon content of electricity, climate averages and extremes disrupting energy supplies and uses). The social and governance domain involve behavioral and decision-making elements,25 such as regulations, planning, and incentives as well as a user’s adoption readiness, everyday practices, and cultural expectations (e.g., comfort26) of heating their buildings, or of commuting or driving to their jobs, recreation, and schools.27,28 Capabilities to analyze these are a key strength that social sciences brings to the table. This paper will use a systems approach to examine knowledge on urbanization, electrification, and cities and to examine the limits, barriers and possibilities for action that, given SETEGs multiscale nature, lie both inside and outside the city.

2. State of Knowledge Existing research is predominantly defined by siloed and not always compatible approaches to urbanization, electrification and urban areas. Thus, to assess these, we will use the multilevel perspective, developed across multiple disciplines to analyze the transformative potential of technological innovations such as those currently driving urban electrification.17–19,25,29 This potential is explained by the interplay of three analytical levels: landscape, regime, and niche.

• The landscape is the broader and more stable level where transitions take place, comprising urbanization, economic trends, political coalitions, environmental problems, and normative values and visions – e.g., of sustainable and resilient electrification futures – that broadly shape stakeholders’ actions steering energy transitions. This context will be described in section 2.1.

• The regime refers to the energy system that the niche is disrupting (see section 2.2). The regime organizes uses of electricity and structures relationships amongst utilities, regulators, and grid operators whose priorities and understanding of appropriate ways to supply electricity and deploy mobility, heating, cooling, and other technologies are intertwined with the expectations and practices of users (e.g., range anxiety or lack of resources to afford technologies). It includes

Figure 2: Urban Electric Systems

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governance arrangements and the technologies for providing transmission, distribution, and use of electricity.

• The niche is the least stable level, as it is where market and technology innovations such as EVs emerge, evolve, and then compete for resources. This competition and evolution takes place in ways that may only serve a small, specialized section of the population, but which may scale dramatically in the future. Within the niche, networks pushing these innovations through different actions (to be described in section 2.3) are built by private firms, utilities, scientists, R&D organizations, and decision makers who are invested in advancing new technologies.

Beyond the three analytical levels, energy systems are generally considered “dynamically stable,” imposing a logic and direction for incremental sociotechnical change along established pathways of design, deployment, regulation, and use of new technologies which, in turn, create path dependency or lock-in. For instance, the low-density urban form of many North American cities, which constrains options to electrify cities, has been largely the result of freeway construction programs and land use regulations.30–32 Infrastructural and behavioural path dependencies resulting from these actions have created low-density urban forms and a dependence on private vehicles, both associated with more electricity and energy use.11,33,34 While urban electricity SETEGs are dynamically stable, at the same time they are also constantly subject to external and internal pressures, which can lead to deep transformations. Historic examples include the transition from cesspools to sanitation and from horses to internal combustion vehicles.17,35,36 The challenge is, therefore, to develop R&D capabilities to examine both processes defining path dependency as well as levers and agents of change. This is the ultimate goal: to enable cities to anticipate the significant choices confronting them with regard to electricity infrastructures and the ways that those may intersect with urbanization and to identify and avoid risks and downsides.

2.1 Trends and factors driving urban electrification at the landscape level

A series of trends at the landscape level is placing cities and the power sector at the vanguard of what can become a far-reaching transformation of energy systems in the United States and globally.1 While the electricity supply has been remarkably stable for decades, it is being redefined by market and technological developments, such as the steep drop in the cost of renewables—e.g., the cost to install solar power dropped by 70% since 2010.37 By 2020, renewable power generation technologies that are currently in commercial use will fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or even undercutting fossil fuels.38 This drop has been accompanied by the expansion of flexible natural gas-fired generation as gas becomes more readily available.1,23 Newly improved electric end-use technologies are also emerging that require electricity, such as EVs and autonomous machines, which are interacting with the digitalization and growing connectivity of the global economy. Utilities and investors see changes in electricity demand and supply as new sources of investment and business,39 as can be seen from the global trends in investment in electricity networks, which rose to more than $300 billion (40% of power sector investment), its highest level in nearly a decade.40

Despite experiencing a post-recession stabilization, atmospheric emissions are again increasing.41 Since 2000, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the power sector have grown by an annual average of 2.3%. Coal-fired power plants remain the largest single source of energy-related CO2 emissions and account for the majority of the sector’s total emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter.38 Changes in extreme events associated with climate change are affecting the seasonality of

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demand and supply and creating infrastructure vulnerabilities.42 These likely scenarios create new challenges and opportunities for advancing the reliability of power systems.43

Visions and narratives around issues such as smart, sustainable and resilient cities; effective carbon mitigation policies; or the Sustainable Development Goals are key in articulating expectations globally, which are of great importance for the development of technologies as they stimulate, steer, and coordinate action among actors as diverse as designers, managers, investors, consumers, sponsors, and politicians.44–47 Motivated by these visions, governmental and private organizations are introducing policies seeking to electrify energy uses and transition energy supplies away from fossil fuels.48,49 Many transnational organizations, countries, and cities have announced carbon mitigation goals such as decarbonized electrification. For example, 193 countries,50 9,378 cities, 2,483 companies, and 118 civil society organizations have made mitigation pledges.50,51 In the United States, over 90 cities, more than 10 counties, and 2 states have adopted ambitious 100% clean energy goals.

2.2 Current urban electric SETEGs at the regime level

Data on current electricity uses tend to be aggregated at the national level. Global electricity consumption has risen by about 70% since 2000. The steady increase in electricity demand means that it is now the second largest energy source by end-use (the first is oil).1 As shown in Figure 3, light and heavy industry is the number one source of electricity demand in developing economies, whereas in advanced economies, the buildings sector is the largest source of demand. Transport’s share is the second lowest. However, globally and in the United States, the transport sector is projected to experience the fastest electrification levels.1,23 This shift, which explains the current scholarship focus on transport electrification, is also taking place rapidly in parts of Europe and in India and China.

Figure 3: Share of electricity demand by sector and end use, 20171

Electrification varies across countries and from urban to rural areas, affecting energy supply and social practices of energy use.23 Figure 4, which shows the association between GDP per capita and urban, rural, and total electrification rates, illustrates that while in the United States and Europe access to electricity is nearly universal, urban to rural differences in access exist in lower-income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The statistical associations between electrification rates and GDP per

20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Advancedeconomies

Developingeconomies

Heating Cooling Appliances OtherIndustryBuildings

Light Heavy

Other AgricultureTransport

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capita show that electrification and urbanization are deeply related with each other and with wealth (GDP). At every level of electrification, there is high variability in GDP per capita, meaning that some countries deliver much higher socio-economic impact from energy services across rural to urban gradients than others do. The central curve also highlights a key understudied problem: lack of electrification is bad for extremely poor places inhabited by 1.1 billion people, particularly in urban slums without electricity and accounting for between 10% and 65% of the urban population in the global South.52 The challenge here is to know which settlements and populations are more suitable for innovative urban electrification and what the potential for leapfrogging is (e.g., over fossil fuels to renewable electricity, private ownership to shared assets, siloed to integrated planning).24

Figure 4: Associations between logarithmic GDP per capita (USD, 2010 constant prices) and urban, rural, and total electrification rates53

The line is a semi-parametric estimate based on a general additive model.

2.3 Actions and actors at the niche and regime levels

Actions are underway at the niche level promoting innovations that have the potential to shift urban electricity systems from EVs and the Internet of Things to rooftop PV.54 These actions are driven by the landscape trends and are motivated by a wide array of socioeconomic, political, and environmental goals, such as developing energy technologies and markets, creating jobs, reducing energy costs, providing energy access, reducing air pollution, improving people’s quality of life, achieving energy security and resilience, and fostering effective planning and fulfilment of international and national mandates and policies.55

The challenge for most of these technological innovations is that, while they can be adopted at the individual level among generally wealthier early adopters and on an experimental basis by specific communities, their larger-scale growth requires fundamental changes at the regime level. This is key aspects of regime-level organization are fixed by urban infrastructural and institutional organization, i.e.,

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they are path dependent. For instance, historically cities have been the central organizational level in electricity grids and utilities, patterns that remain important today even as the governance of electricity systems has diversified with regional utility consolidation and market development. 11 Cities also prioritize transportation planning for daily commuting and freight transport within local economies, as well as larger supply chain networks.56,57 Therefore, existing patterns of infrastructure and governance have profound influences on the design and scaling of niche innovations, which in turn are creating complex renegotiations of regime-level rules, practices, and infrastructures, albeit slowly.

Studies of urban electrification also need to recognize that, because urban electricity SETEGs are cross-scale systems, actions in cities are also affected by actions and processes beyond their boundaries, and actions shaping electrification create effects far outside of the demarcations of city limits.58 These systems are, therefore, multilevel governance concerns, challenging a range of stakeholders (labeled actors) across sectors and jurisdictions to create coalitions. 58–60 Also called actor networks, these play multiple roles in the governance of energy transitions: as providers of electricity, facilitators of interactions with other cities that face similar challenges, and shapers of the visions for energy transitions more broadly.58–60 Thus, city-relevant action takes place within a broader SETEG context, with actors and organizations at a multitude of scales shaping urban-scale interventions and innovations.

Nonetheless, city actions are driving change, and have the potential to drive significantly more, given their centrality to regime-level dynamics. Thousands of cities are conducting emissions inventories that help them quantify the amount of electricity and energy use and associated emissions.61 As a result of policy actions targeting the decarbonization of the electricity supply, about 40 cities worldwide (30 in Latin America) and 6 U.S. cities (Aspen CO; Burlington VT; Georgetown TX; Greensburg KS; Rock Port, MO; and Kodiak Island, AK) are commercially powered by renewables. The number of cities fueled by at least 70% renewable electricity grew more than two-fold between 2015 and early 2018 (from 42 to 101), including cities from high-income countries (e.g., Auckland, New Zealand, and Seattle, WA, United States), and low- and middle-income countries (e.g., Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya).55

City officials are fostering the use of renewables in their government-owned facilities, integrating them into their building codes, and fostering renewables in the electricity, building, and transportation sectors.62 They have encouraged private sector involvement in this area. For instance, Berlin, Germany, has reduced emissions from 1,300 public buildings with 25 Energy Savings Partnerships since 1996. 58

Given the instantaneous emissions reductions from the efficiency of switching from liquid petroleum to electric engines (EVs use about one-third of the energy)63and the associated cost-savings, transportation has become a crucial element of actions. In 2017, the European Commission launched the Clean Mobility Package to set new carbon emission standards and guidance for cleaner mobility. Countries such as the United States, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and cities such as Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, and Seattle in the United States, and Athens, Greece, Madrid, Spain, Paris, France, and Stuttgart, Germany, have introduced regulations to incentivize the adoption of privately owned EVs through tax rebates, access to priority lanes, free parking, or free electricity.64 For instance, in 2017, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) designated several highways as alternative fuel corridors, with the intent of establishing a comprehensive national network of refueling stations to promote the continued adoption of alternative fuel vehicles.65 This network will include nationally consistent signage and is intended to encourage multistate collaborations of public and private actors.

California is aggressively advocating for adoption of EVs with a goal of 5 million zero emission vehicles on the road by 2030 and 250,000 electric vehicle charging stations installed by 2025.66 Supporting policies are motivated to help California meet its goal of cutting CO2 emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and attaining the health-based air quality requirements established in the federal Clean Air Act.

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Los Angeles revealed its 2019 Sustainability Plan—L.A.’s Green New Deal—which sets transportation electrification goals for 100% zero emission vehicles by 2050, 100% electrification of city transit buses by 2030, and 80% reduction in port-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.67

Car manufacturers have pledged to move away from the production of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEs). For instance, “BMW plans to mass-produce EVs by 2020, offering 12 models by 2025. Renault plans to produce 20 electrified models by 2022, including eight pure EVs. Volkswagen will invest up to $84 billion in battery and EV technology to electrify all 300 of its models by 2030. Volvo has committed to fit every car it produces by 2019 with electric or hybrid engines.”68

Multi-faceted actions are underway to solve the challenge of charging infrastructure. In particular, direct-current fast charging is receiving significant attention as the fastest plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging system currently available. Tesla has established a global network of 5,894 fast-charging stations, supporting 13,344 individual fast chargers rated at up to 250 kW as of July 2019.69 Electrify America—a project funded in 2016 by Volkswagen Group of America as required by a settlement for emissions cheating—has committed to investing $2 billion over 10 years in ZEV infrastructure and education programs, including $800 million in California alone.70,71 Electrify America currently has over 230 fast charge locations operating in the United States as of July 2019, with plans for over 480 by the end of 2019.

These are niche-level actions because their promoters are competing with the actors and elements of current urban electric and energy systems. To decarbonize energy, dramatic changes are needed in society, technology, markets, and users’ practices.19 This can be seen in the still low levels of penetration of EVs and electricity fueled by renewables. In 2017 only twenty-five cities were home to almost 1.4 million of the world’s 3.1 million electric passenger vehicles. Eleven are located in China (Beijing, Changsha, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Zhengzhou); six in the United States. (Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle); six in Europe (London, England; Paris, France; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Bergen and Oslo, Norway; and Stockholm, Sweden); and two in Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto).72

2.4 Benefits, opportunities, barriers, and challenges Not only is urban electrification faced with opportunities, barriers, and challenges to transition to sustainable and resilient urban electricity systems, but it is also likely to create new forms of risks and vulnerabilities (e.g., privacy risks associated with the rise of smart energy systems). We apply the framework discussed in section 1.2 to summarize what we know about benefits, barriers, and challenges, which often don’t exist in clearly defined classes with associated actors and users (Table 1).19,73 For instance, benefits in one domain are not exempted from trade-offs associated with others, which creates significant uncertainty and ambiguity.

Urban electrification is often associated with benefits such as enhanced productivity, improvements in quality of life and public health, protection of ecosystems, and safeguarding of ecosystem services for future generations.54 Climate and atmospheric benefits can accrue via the general electrification of energy uses, with additional benefits for fuel costs and human health.74,75 However, these benefits are variable depending on factors such as the generation mix of the electricity grid. 76 Moreover, electricity systems have been historically designed and build (especially in developed countries) with fewer electrified end-uses in mind (e.g., no EVs, fewer appliances, limited electrified industrial process). New electrification trends, which are opening up co-optimization opportunities, might also disrupt these systems and could cause integration issues, especially at the distribution level that should be planned

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for and addressed.100,101,102

The equity impacts of electrification are also variable, depending on the policies used to promote the transition. The nature and location of energy financing and infrastructure investments can cause low-income households to benefit or lose. For example, few low-income households participate in solar, storage, and EV programs, but these programs are financed by raising the electric rates of all customers.15,77–79 While such inequitable impacts of electricity tariffs can be offset by modest low-income energy assistance programs (e.g., the federal LIHEAP program in the United States 80) or subsidized EV access, such as the BlueLA EV carshare in low-income Los Angeles communities,81 such support is widely variable depending on state, municipality, and utility provider. 15,77–79

Table 1: Overview of Barriers and Challenges to Electrification and Energy Transitions

Dimension Inclusive of Example(s) Social and behavioral

Consumer and user perceptions, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior

Consumer perceptions, including benefits, distrust, inconvenience, confusion, EV range anxiety

Economic and financial

Price signals, economics, and business portfolio

Capital cost of vehicle-grid integration (VGI) charging stations, vehicles, batteries and interconnectors, revenues, cost savings

Technical and infrastructural

Technology, infrastructure, urban form (or morphology), and hardware

Power density, space for, quality, reliability, and flexibility of PVs, wind systems Grid interconnection, communication, battery degradation, vehicle performance, integration with existing distribution systems, and role of disruptive technologies (e.g., automation)

Environmental Holistic costs and benefits Mitigated greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, integration with renewable sources of energy, externalities

Governance or institutional

Regulatory and economic Regulations, incentives, investments, taxations

Source: Adapted from 85

Consumer and user perceptions and culture—as manifested in lack of familiarity with emerging technologies (e.g., photovoltaics and EVs), cultural and status expectations of comfort, anxiety and distrust, or just lack of knowledge—can become crucial sources of social barriers.26,82,83 For instance, sociological studies on the use of air conditioning have shown that rather than only temperature or human physiology, gender, status, and sociocultural conventions shape comfort.26 Even as the cost of EVs becomes a less relevant concern, customers still experience worry about depleting their battery’s charge before reaching their destination or waiting for their EVs to charge. Understanding societal barriers is challenging as they vary across location, gender, education, income, and cultural and political preferences. In residential buildings, natural gas cook tops and fireplaces may be challenging to electrify due to consumer cultural preferences.84

As for the economic dimension, while the cost of new technologies often decreases over time, and varies depending on location, the affordability of items such as electricity sources, EVs, and PVs, or the availability of funding to foster their use can become barriers. For example, in a study of EV and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies in Nordic countries, known for their leadership in this field globally, Noel et

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al. 19 found that economic barriers result not only from lack of production in EV and V2G technologies, but also from still higher marginal costs as compared with those of ICEs, but also from still higher marginal costs as compared with those of ICEs even if operating costs are lower. This is indicative of the economic and social complexities consumers face when making choices related to new, at times “unproven” technologies.

A substantial technical challenge to the provision of electricity through renewables is the need to grow low-carbon energy storage capabilities, new demand management capabilities, and long-distance transmission infrastructures in the system to account for mismatches in the spatial and temporal patterns of demand and supply of low-carbon energy generation. These mismatches, which have plagued the electrical industry since its very beginning, have historically been addressed using stored hydrocarbon fuels, regional transmission infrastructures, pumped hydro, and extensive demand management approaches, from investment in industries in all these fields to demand charges and the right to turn off large customers during peak demand periods. Future strategies are likely to depend on multiple technologies, including distributed energy generation and storage, flexible low-carbon fuels (such as hydrogen or utilization of captured carbon), renewables, grid-scale storage, Internet of Things-enabled advanced demand management, new transmission corridors, and a variety of other technologies needed to transition to low or net zero energy systems.2

The spatial urban form or morphology of cities can pose barriers such as inadequate installation (e.g., for PVs) or charging space (e.g., for EVs). For instance, the building stock of a city determines how much electricity can be generated from PV panels, which benefits from being angled in a direction that maximizes sun exposure; the building stock also constrains the amount of space available for EV charging in buildings, parking areas and other spaces.

Governance arrangements, or the rule-making system and actor-networks at all levels both in and outside of government, are used to steer cities toward electrification and energy transitions.86 In countries worldwide such as Spain, Austria, the United States, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, policy supports for electrification such as regulations, incentives, investments, and taxations can be removed, weakened, or just inadequate.58 Local and state governments act independently in pursuit of mitigation actions, often in spite of the lack of comprehensive or ambitious policy at the national level.87–89 Despite their ambitions, these actors are constrained in their capacity to influence national policy 90 and face barriers related to influence, resources, and political culture,91 and arising out of the lack of vertical integration in decision making, including the multiplicity of shifting or competing priorities with which urban decision makers grapple.92 In larger urban areas, such as New York City, Mexico City, and Dakar, which may have governments comprised of two or more local and even state authorities, each authority can act only within its boundaries. In this diffusion of power, the overall impact of one authority may be limited unless there is horizontal collaboration among neighbouring authorities or an overarching strategic metropolitan authority exists to ensure citywide action.58

City officials in lower-income countries often face financial, human resources, and institutional barriers. For instance, in Cape Town, South Africa, and Mexico City, state and local governments are currently constrained by differences among ruling parties and their politics. In many cities from low-income countries, actions often depend on foreign financial aid. It has been found that international sponsors frequently lack the financial, human, and institutional capabilities to identify and adapt expensive technologies to local needs, for instance for affordable and easy-to-maintain technological options.83

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3. Advancing R&D on urban electrification Workshop participants identified many topics, falling within five overarching themes that will help to advance R&D on electrification, urbanization, and cities. Within these, specific ideas for concept papers and projects (underlined below with their endnotes) were identified (see brief description in Annex). i. Innovative and rigorous theoretical approaches to examine the multiscale drivers, attributes,

and impacts of urban electrification To overcome an existing focus on one element at a time, approaches are needed that include physical, engineering, behavioral, and decision-making sciences. Equally important is to develop integrated and multi-sectoral models, analytics, data, visualizations, and methods to analyze the multiscale drivers, characteristics, interactions, and impacts of urban electrification. Modeling integration across sectors and geographical scales is of no lesser importance. Identified elements requiring R&D include:

a) The links between urban and transboundary elements of urban electricity systems, e.g., among residential, transportation, commercial, and life-cycle energy models and their energy footprint93

b) The drivers and impacts of emerging processes and technologies (e.g., electrification of trucking,i autonomous EVs),ii or unexplored issues (e.g., their transformational potential and outcomes)

c) The mechanisms by which interdependent factors (e.g., infrastructure and actions) affect electricity and energy supply and use, as well as their resilience to extremes, cyberattacks, and other disruptions

d) The business models required to co-optimize multiple systems and send proper signals (e.g., electricity pricing) to multiple stakeholders to leverage Internet of Things-enabled advanced demand management.

Integral to this is attention to urban electrification in poor, vulnerable, or slum urban areas where understanding these dynamics remains a challenge as data are generally sparse or entirely lacking. This endeavor has relevance to remote areas everywhere, and requires particular care in the design and application of tools.94–96

ii. Generalizable science accurately representing socio-spatial and temporal differences across and within cities and their countries

Drivers, features, interactions, and impacts of urban electrification vary within and across cities and over time. Differences exist in rural as compared to suburban and urban electricity systems. While the common themes of importance like flexibility, reliability, and affordability of urban electricity systems are common to these geographies, what electrified mobility, heating, and cooling options look like on the ground will vary with scale and often remain context specific. For example, differences between public and private service providers and sizes of vehicles used are shaped by a combination of physical forces (like urban form)iii and social forces (like income, access, and inequality). Therefore, innovative approaches such as these are needed:

a) Comparative studies, for instance, to analyze electrification implications on growing urban areas (e.g., in the U.S. Sun Belt) vis-a-vis declining urban areas (e.g., in the U.S. Rust Belt)

b) Typologiesiv to examine variations across populations and settlement types in technology adoption, electricity use, associated impacts, and resilience97–99

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c) Case studies that inform and are informed by a) and b). iii. Predictive capabilities to analyze the implications of electrification for the future of cities and

of urbanization for the future of systems

Robust knowledge on how urbanization and electrification have interacted is fundamental to anticipating and steering future energy and electricity systems. Predictive capabilities are needed to analyze how urbanization and electrification will interact within and across cities to know what barriers, limits, and options are posed to energy transitions. A sound understanding is also needed of how values and visions —e.g., of smart cities or sustainable and resilient electrification futures—broadly shape stakeholders’ motivations and preferences for and actions steering energy transitions. Action items for R&D in this topic include:

a) Localized scenarios for the future urban electrification that incorporate stakeholders’ visions and help them identify local actions to enhance goals such as decarbonized electrificationv

b) Modeling and simulation of alternative urban electrification deployment futures and their implications for metrics such as electricity cost, efficiency, equity, and reliability

c) Social impact assessment to improve understanding of how the shifting energy landscape of urban SETEG systems affects energy cost, access, affordability, and the delivery of various energy services

d) City resilience planning and financing, particularly under scenarios of pervasive electrification, where the nature of redundancies and energy storage will be substantially different.

iv. Systems approach for the analysis of behavior and decision making, together with SETEG

domains The proposed framework suggests the need to develop toolsets that explicitly include human behavior and decision making, together with the complex co-evolution of physical infrastructures, technologies, economic markets, and governance (rules, codes, conventions, and political cultures). This is fundamental to analyzing and simulating how the coming together of SETEG domains shapes barriers and enablers and generates pressures for and against energy transitions. All these dynamics have implications for path dependencies, levers, and change agents. Some examples of topics requiring future R&D are:

a) Benefits, burdens, hazards, costs, and externalities of electrification on various sectors of the population and across space, e.g., urban vs. exurban and rural communitiesvi

b) Path dependencies associated with investments in physical infrastructure, technologies, political institutions, public policies, and user behavior

c) Innovations; experiments (e.g., sidewalk labs, smart districts); and other levers together with their agents of change.

v. Analysis of outcomes, actions and options Notwithstanding the myriad actions, experiments, and interventions underway seeking to steer urban electrification, we do not know which of these can achieve crucial societal outcomes such as enhanced productivity, decarbonization, and improved human health. We also do not know where, for whom, and when they are more effective, and why.73 Therefore, robust tools and methods are needed to analyze costs, risks, co-benefits, and trade-offs.vii For instance, electrification is widely regarded as a pathway for achieving a range of environmental and societal benefits. However, there are a number of unexplored questions regarding:

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a) The most effective way to facilitate urban electrification, and ultimate goals (decarbonization, air quality, energy security), for example through infrastructure choices, policy incentives and subsidies, regulations, and standards

b) Joint solutions, for instance for equitable access, EV transitions, flexibility, reliability, and the tradeoffs, for example, between energy footprints and daily uses of energy

c) The governance and technological levers (e.g., organizational leadership, low-carbon technologies and urban design, business models) needed to maximize co-benefits and minimize tradeoffs.

4. Concluding remarks Accelerated rates of economic and technological change are opening transformational opportunities to help steer energy transitions in sustainable and resilient ways. To help harness these opportunities for the public benefit, R&D offers an important space for identifying and informing systems transitions toward integrated and decarbonized urban electrification. There remains the need to explicitly include human behavior and decision making, together with the co-evolution of SETEG domains. Most crucially, to examine the outcomes of actions shaping the current urban electrification and the broader energy transition of which it is part. By identifying and bridging key SETEG barriers and enablers, pressures for and against electrification and energy transitions, path-dependencies, and change levers and agents, there will be opportunities to inform how current systems may transform via new connections, interdependencies, and convergence (e.g., of energy uses, infrastructures, and decision making). While a comprehensive framework aims at producing generalizable findings, it must also be aware of context-specific conditions and explore the differences as well as the similarities at play. In moving forward to advance R&D, there will be a need to explore and acknowledge current and future systemic risks (e.g., of sprawl, inequitable energy access, emissions, unhealthy and vulnerable cities and individuals) while embracing the positive elements of change such as more choices, greater affordability, and accessibility. With the knowledge R&D can generate, urban electrification can aid in the process of creating healthier and more livable cities that use less energy, produce less emissions, and are more resilient

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6. Annex Below is a list of other outputs from the workshop. i Southworth and Brown, “Siting Electric Truck Charging Infrastructure in Large Metropolitan Areas”, concept note describing a potential project. ii Romero-Lankao et al., “Transformational Analysis through Behavioral Science: Symbiotic Autonomous Systems (SAS)”. Awarded LDRD. iii Young, “Electrification in Urban Mobility - more than just EVs”, draft of concept note. iv Romero-Lankao et al., “Technology adoption and its impacts across settlements and populations: A typology”. SMART mobility project. v Miller et al., “Using science fiction to explore urban electrification futures”. Proposal approved by ASU to hold a workshop and write a book. This is a collaborative effort between ASU and NREL. vi Chavez et al., “Fuel Technologies: Innovations High-Altitude, Cold Climate Communities”. This is one of 3 proposals submitted to DOE. Currently under review. vii Bettencourt et al., “Quantify Unintended Co-benefits and Consequences throughout the Systems “, draft of concept note.