Page 379 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

352 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

region (IMAR) can be a “Strategic Energy Base” for demonstration sites in
various locations. For example, Belgium is considering an “energy base” for
the EU hydrogen highway. And California is implementing its Hydrogen
Highway with 220 fueling stations.
An important concept is “sustainable development” (SD). For most policy
makers, SD includes environment, energy, and economics. Energy includes
conventional fossil fuels, nuclear, clean coal, renewables, and others.
Among the important economic terms is “stranded costs,” referring to capital
costs for system equipment, structures, and facilities that constitute long-term
repayment commitments, but become unrecoverable because of being super-
seded by new technologies or competition. For example, a conventional coal
power plant built today will strand costs that need to be recovered over a 20- to
30 year-period, as the plant becomes replaced with cleaner technologies before
the obligations are paid off.
Other critical areas include “infrastructures,” which include water, waste,
energy, environment, transportation, education, and medicine. Related to this
are “hybrid” systems that can utilize technologies in combination with one
another. This approach works for vehicles and is now available for homes and
buildings.

THEME 2: DIFFERENCES THAT EXIST BETWEEN REGIONS,
CITIES, AND NATIONS
Inherent differences may pose serious conflicts between a nation and its
regions, cities, and states. Nations also have vast differences between regions
and states/provinces. Scotland, for example, has aggressive renewable energy
programs in wind, wave, and solar power. This region of the United Kingdom
was prominent for its coal generation for almost a century, but the region
needed to shift dramatically from labor-intensive and polluting forms of
energy generation into something entirely new and climate friendly.

THEME 3: LONG-TERM COMMITMENTS
Along with government policy, financial programs must be created and applied
over a long period of time. Finance, public policy, and regulations are the keys
to any energy base. Government and business alike need to have policies in
place along with funding so that they can plan. The People’s Republic of
China’s (PRC’s) Five-Year Plans are very useful in this regard. Such plans do
not exist in most Western nations, since commitments depend on political
elections. IMAR is uniquely positioned to be able to meet both the national
and regional concerns for leadership and long-term commitments to turn its
policies into education, environmental protection, and economic development
of the energy base.