Exploration of urban growth scenarios, energy consumption and GHG emissions for Greater Melbourne

Urban energy consumption is affected by the city urban structure configuration and distribution of population and dwelling densities (Newton, 1997). The production of the necessary electricity, petrol and gas for the functioning of Australian cities is heavily based in non-renewable sources, incrementing changes in climate patterns and increasing the need of energy consumption for heating, cooling and urban transportation. The present paper explores different urban growth scenarios for Greater Melbourne and the impact of these in the residential and commercial buildings operational energy and residential transport energy consumption and GHG emissions. A Bottom Up Building Typology base modeling approach (develop by CSIRO) was used to obtain the building energy baseline for 2011, distributing building typologies in Greater Melbourne for residential (350 typologies) and commercial (120 typologies) buildings. These typologies were modelled using the AusZEH energy modeler software (developed by CSIRO) and the eQUEST energy simulator tool. Non-Linear regression analysis was used to obtain the residential transport energy consumption, using the VISTA 2009 dataset provided by the Victoria Department of Transport at household level. The results were then projected into selected urban growth scenarios using official projections form the Victorian Government and ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). The urban growth scenarios explored (compact city, activity center, corridor city, BAU) show that the distribution of population and housing diversity have a large impact in the energy consumption and GHG emissions, especially for the residential transport consumption. Also, the configuration of decentralized models such as Activity Center scenarios and urban corridor scenarios showed a more efficient use of the energy consumption and GHG emissions for Greater Melbourne.