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276 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

FIGURE 14.14 Wind power at the Rotterdam Port (Port of Rotterdam, 2016).

As the Port of Rotterdam is the most polluting aspect of the city, focus has
been given to reducing its overall energy usage and GHG emissions. The port
area was in 2016 the location of almost 200 MW of installed wind turbine
capacity. Infrastructure investments are furthermore continuously made to
utilize the waste heat generated by the port area industrial process for district
heating and other industrial processes. A new port, Maasvlakte 2, was also
created as a demonstration port, with strict sustainability requirements for
companies that wish to operate there, with fully electric container terminals
running on wind power (Port of Rotterdam)(Fig. 14.14).
The RCI adopted the Rotterdam Energy Approach and Planning (REAP)
approach to help achieve its sustainability goals in 2009. REAP is a three-step
energy initiative emphasizing energy efficiency, waste energy flows, and the
use of renewable energy. Eight interactive workshops and 20 meetings were
held at the beginning of its adoption by the city for politicians, civil servants,
economists, the regional European Parliament, and local energy companies to
explain and discuss the development plan. Examples of REAP in practice
include the Hart van Zuid retrofitting project, Stadshaven redevelopment
project, and also increasing of the district heating network with plans to
increase connection to 155,000 homes by 2035 (Lenhart et al., 2015).

DISCUSSION
When looking at the European energy transition at a community level, a
couple of methods are constantly seen, perhaps the most constant being the use
of district heating. The centralized production of heat, many times via CHP
power plants, centralizes the combustion fuel allowing for greater emission
control versus the use of individual boilers, and allows for a greater variety of
fuels to be used that have lesser carbon footprints than coal or oil. This is seen
in Sweden, where biomass waste from the regional forestry industry is used, or