Augmenting City Planning Approaches Through Energy Retrofit: A Roadmap to Sustainable Megacities

With the global energy demand on a constant rise, the acute shortage of natural resources is being felt at every stage across the world. As alternate solutions are being investigated to find feasible solutions, it has become necessary to establish a hybrid system that incorporates both active and passive ways of developing the built environment. In this quest for a hybrid and balanced network of strategies for a sustainable built environment, net-zero policies, energy efficient built forms, low-carbon energy systems, and energy retrofit of urban communities serve as significant links. The primary objective of this study is to determine the potential savings that may be realized by including net-zero and low-carbon technologies into the energy retrofit loop for the existing and upcoming urban built environment. The comparative cases of two Indian cities, Surat and Puri, were used as a basis for quantifying possible savings through a hypothetical projection-based analysis. This comparison of the two cities, based on their population growth projections, emphasizes the severity of energy consumption and the need for urban regeneration. It also emphasizes the need for hybrid policy frameworks that allow the use of building rules, development plans, and town planning schemes as implementation tools for establishing energy policies at both micro and macro urban scales.