How to Achieve Energy Efficient Communities

This chapter introduces Urban Energy Planning (UEP), which addresses energy action plans ("Master Plans") for whole cities, and Local Energy Planning (LEP), considering neighborhood energy plans. Illustrating the term "integrated planning", the approach to combine energy conservation and energy supply optimization in iterative steps is exemplified using results of an optimization procedure for a residential neighborhood in the City of Karlsruhe, Germany. Also, using results from Case Studies carried out within the framework of an IEA project on "Energy Efficient Communities", a comparison of three of these cases is presented using the methods introduced, which illustrates the results that can be achieved with very different energy technologies and which provides the means to benchmark their primary energy performance.