Call for Membership: Smart grids – smart cities?
To establish an international academic working group (IAK) on
"Smart grids – smart cities?"
the ARL is currently looking for participants. The members of the working group will address the topic and its sub-aspects both from inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives.
Background
The liberalisation and Europeanisation of electricity markets, climate mitigation policies, and the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy technologies are driving fundamental transitions of European power grids at all levels. This restructuring often results in locational shifts of energy generation within the individual countries (often far away from the major load centres) and has considerable spatial impacts. It not only changes the spatial topology of electricity networks and interferes with land uses, but it also shapes a whole host of spatial relations, including forms of integration, exclusion, bypassing, and proximity. The spatial governance and planning of electricity supply can no longer treat electricity as a homogeneous commodity, but instead has to address the qualities of electricity supply more systematically—the availability of electricity in peak hours and in load centres (or its surplus in off-peak periods and in load peripheries), its low carbon credentials, its capacities to be stored, and its system reliability, among other issues. We thus need to understand how the changing nature of energy networks and economies reshapes forms of socio-spatial order, politics and inequalities—all of which have implications for spatial governance and planning.