Urban energyscapes planning for renewables‐based cities

Australia's cities—as represented by their transport, industrial and domestic sectors—continue to consume energy at record levels according to the 2006 Australia State of Environment Report on Human Settlements (www.deh.gov.au/soe). Notwithstanding the nation's significant endowments of fossil fuels, the political and commercial inertia that exerts the dual challenges of peak oil and greenhouse gaslinked global warming and climate change requires energy planning that will provide alternative sustainable pathways for the operation of our cities into the future. Urban planning for a future based on distributed renewable energy compared with centralised fossil-fuel based energy systems will also require rethinking current planning practice at scales ranging from building to city-region level.