Decarbonisation of the built environment is needed to abate the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. In the city of Amsterdam, multiple bottom-up initiatives have been initiated to reach these goals. In this paper, we explore how energy justice is reshaped by these initiatives on an urban scale. This is done by a case study on a platform that aims to connect, support and inform community energy initiatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork performed between 2019 and 2022 on the heat transition in Amsterdam, we describe how relations between governmental bodies, businesses and urban residents are contested through this platform. Additionally, we describe how the platform shapes the access of citizens to decision-making spaces, financial tools and information to foster new forms of local autonomy, physical heating infrastructures and decision-making procedures. By analysing the motivations and activities for increasing users’ influence and ownership of resources with the notion of ‘commoning practices’, we show how activities of the platform do not only shape physical heating infrastructures, but also the decision-making processes for achieving low-carbon and renewable heating systems in Amsterdam. We, therefore, propose that the notion of ‘commoning practices’ can be used in future research to contribute to a dynamic understanding of how energy justice concerns are expressed and shaped in practice.

This thesis investigates the social-environmental-technological transformations associated with the transition towards low-carbon and renewable urban heating in Amsterdam. Using urban heating infrastructures as the unit of analysis, the research addresses three themes: water use, committed emissions, and energy justice. The first theme examines water use through a multi-scale energy and water model, showing that water withdrawal for Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) systems could reach levels comparable to current national water use for cooling in electricity production. The study highlights the importance of multi-scale assessment of water use, including virtual water embedded in fuels, to prevent future water stress. The second theme focuses on committed emissions, defined as cumulative carbon emissions over a planning period. By integrating a bottom-up heat demand model with a mixed-integer nonlinear optimisation framework, scenarios are evaluated to minimise emissions between 2030 and 2050. Results indicate that ambitious building insulation and electricity decarbonisation measures increase uptake of low-temperature heating systems, reducing emissions and limiting reliance on high-temperature fossil-based systems. Risks of carbon lock-ins due to insufficient heat density in low-temperature networks are also identified. The third theme addresses energy justice through ethnographic research on collective heating initiatives, revealing that these initiatives both contest and shape the transition, enhancing decision-making liberties, ownership, and responsibilities within communities. Collectively, the studies demonstrate how multi-scale, multidisciplinary approaches combining technical modelling with social science methods provide novel insights into urban sustainability transitions, informing the design and governance of future low-carbon heating systems.

Transitioning towards renewable heating is important to minimise the use of fossil fuels and abate carbon emissions, because heating accounts for 50% of the final energy consumption and 40% of carbon dioxide emissions globally. In the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the aim is to transition towards renewable heating by 2040 and achieve carbon-neutral heating by 2050 through a neighbourhood-based approach. Such an approach entails that per neighbourhood a renewable heat solution is chosen based on criteria such as carbon emissions, reliability, affordability and feasibility. The impacts of urban heating systems however goes beyond a neighbourhood, and take place on multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this presentation we discuss how a transition towards renewable heating systems can influence the water-energy-land nexus on multiple scales in three ways.

First, heating systems use water locally, but also indirectly through the water footprint embedded in energy carriers. We therefore present an analysis of the direct and indirect water use of heating pathways towards 2050. Second, heating systems which currently have the lowest carbon emissions, may not be the heat option with the lowest carbon emissions in the future. Current decisions for heat options can therefore create non-optimal solutions for minimising carbon emissions in the future. An optimization model to find a mix of heating systems to reduce committed emissions on a neighbourhood scale within a given time period for different scenarios for the insulation of buildings and the decarbonisation of electricity generation is therefore presented. At last, new norms and forms of organising neighbourhood-based heating systems may emerge, potentially creating or exacerbating social inequalities within and beyond the spatial boundaries of a neighbourhood. We therefore present the preliminary results of an analysis on energy justice based on in-depth interviews with urban professionals, dwellers and decision makers in Amsterdam.

By presenting these three studies we aim to address the challenge of multi-scale impacts of transitioning towards renewable urban energy systems and show how energy-water-land nexus research can contribute to decision making for urban infrastructures.

Infrastructure for heat provision in the built environment needs to change remarkably to support lowering carbon emissions and achieving climate mitigation targets before 2050. We propose a computational approach for finding a mix of heat options per neighbourhood that minimises cumulative carbon emissions between 2030 and 2050, referred to as committed emissions, while at the same time adhering to technological constraints at both the household and neighbourhood scales. To establish this approach, we integrated bottom-up heat demand modelling at neighbourhood scale with a mixed-integer non-linear optimisation problem. Nine scenarios with different pathways for the insulation of buildings and the decarbonisation in electricity generation were considered and applied to three neighbourhoods in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The results show that (i) the committed emissions are ten times lower between 2030 and 2050 in scenarios in which ambitious measures are taken for the insulation of buildings and the decarbonisation in electricity generation, (ii) only in these ‘ambitious scenarios’ low temperature heat systems, such as heat pumps and low temperature heat networks, are optimal solutions for minimising committed emissions, (iii) if less ambitious insulation and decarbonisation measures are taken, high temperature heat options can be part of the heat mix with lowest committed emissions, and (iv) the minimum heat density for low temperature heat networks is not always achieved, creating risks for carbon lock-ins when applying these heat networks. Our results clearly indicate that pathways for the retrofitting of buildings and the decarbonisation in electricity generation need to be taken into account jointly when designing renewable and low-carbon heat systems to optimally reduce carbon emissions towards 2050 and reduce future carbon lock-ins.

Sustainable energy systems can only be achieved when reducing both carbon emissions and water use for energy generation. Although the water use for electricity generation has been well studied, integrated assessments of the water use by low-carbon heat systems are lacking. In this paper we present an analysis of the water use of scenarios for heat and electricity production for the year 2050 for the Netherlands and its capital, Amsterdam. The analysis shows that (i) the water withdrawal for heating can increase up to the same order of magnitude as the current water withdrawal of thermoelectric plants due to the use of aquifer thermal energy storage, (ii) the virtual water use for heating can become higher than the operational water consumption for heating, and (iii) the water use for electricity production becomes a relevant indicator for the virtual water use for heat generation because of the increase of power-to-heat applications.

Sustainable energy systems can only be achieved when reducing both carbon emissions and water use for energy generation. Water-energy nexus studies are therefore crucial for supporting environmental policy oriented towards the mobilisation of resources in an optimally integrated way. Decarbonizing heating infrastructures is an important part of achieving low-carbon energy systems because they globally account for 50% of the final energy consumption and 40% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In our study, we quantitatively assess the changing water usage of the energy sector due to the integration of low carbon heating infrastructures. Multiple future energy mix scenarios were assessed by building a multi-scale energy and water use model that quantifies the direct and virtual water footprint of space heating and hot water use in households, services and industry. In this presentation we show an analysis on the water use of heating pathways towards the year 2050 for the Netherlands and its capital, the city of Amsterdam. Additionally, we present preliminary results from our research about the trade-offs between carbon emission reductions, insulation measures and energy reliability in neighbourhoods in Amsterdam.

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus for urban sustainability needs to be analyzed via an integrative rather than a sectoral or silo approach, reflecting the ongoing transition from separate infrastructure systems to an integrated social-ecological-infrastructure system. As technology hubs can provide food, energy, water resources via decentralized and/or centralized facilities, there is an acute need to optimize FEW infrastructures by considering cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs with respect to multiple sustainability indicators. This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes global trends with respect to contemporary FEW technology metrics that highlights the possible optimal integration of a broad spectrum of technology hubs for possible cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs. The challenges related to multiscale and multiagent modeling processes for the simulation of urban FEW systems were discussed with respect to the aspects of scaling-up, optimization process, and risk assessment. Our review reveals that this field is growing at a rapid pace and the previous selection of analytical methodologies, nexus criteria, and sustainability indicators largely depended on individual FEW nexus conditions disparately, and full-scale cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs were very rare. Therefore, the potential full-scale technology integration in three ongoing cases of urban FEW systems in Miami (the United States), Marseille (France), and Amsterdam (the Netherlands) were demonstrated in due purpose finally.

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus for urban sustainability needs to be analyzed via an integrative rather than a sectoral or silo approach, reflecting the ongoing transition from separate infrastructure systems to an integrated social-ecological-infrastructure system. As technology hubs can provide food, energy, water resources via decentralized and/or centralized facilities, there is an acute need to optimize FEW infrastructures by considering cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs with respect to multiple sustainability indicators. This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes global trends with respect to contemporary FEW technology metrics that highlights the possible optimal integration of a broad spectrum of technology hubs for possible cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs. The challenges related to multiscale and multiagent modeling processes for the simulation of urban FEW systems were discussed with respect to the aspects of scaling-up, optimization process, and risk assessment. Our review reveals that this field is growing at a rapid pace and the previous selection of analytical methodologies, nexus criteria, and sustainability indicators largely depended on individual FEW nexus conditions disparately, and full-scale cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs were very rare. Therefore, the potential full-scale technology integration in three ongoing cases of urban FEW systems in Miami (the United States), Marseille (France), and Amsterdam (the Netherlands) were demonstrated in due purpose finally.