Zero Emissions City Energy is fundamental to our quality of lives. Energy provides us with electricity and heat daily; it powers our industry, transport and modern ways of life. Lately, there has been growing concerns about the environmental effect and sustainability of conventional (fossil fuel) energy sources. Conventional energy sources emits a large amount of green house gas particularly carbon di oxide to the atmosphere which is believed by many to be a major contributor to global warming. Also, conventional energy sources are finite and not evenly distributed among the various nations thus making some nations energy dependent on others. Therefore there is need to shift to an infinite source of energy that is environmentally benign and provides energy security. This kind of energy is called renewable energy. The scope of this project is to develop a renewable energy system as a platform to build a self-sustainable,
zero-carbon city aimed towards America. Our self-sustaining city will alleviate fears over energy security
and will provide Americans with a cleaner, safer environment to live. Our job is not to create the specific
technologies (already been done), but to design the system in which each will be used to obtain a selfsustainable, zero-carbon American city.
By self-sustaining, we intend to build a city that does not rely on outside resources to keep functioning. It
will act as an independent unit, but also have the ability to interact with the outside environment. The city
needs to have the ability to interact with the outside environment because the city is based on a typical
American city, meaning people will still need the ability to get from place to place. The city is intended
to act as an independent unit, but the people still need to be able to travel to places outside of the city.
Our city will provide 100% of the energy needed through different renewable energy technologies. It will
provide it’s own waste-management system, transportation, and other infrastructure necessities.
We will target the United States because it is home to roughly 5% of the world’s population, yet it uses
approximately 25% of the world’s energy, and is by far the leader in carbon emissions on a per capita
basis. America’s dependence on conventional sources of energy has led to fears about the countries
security and dependence on foreign nations. These fears have brought to light the environmental impact
and sustainability issues of conventional energy sources as well. The system we propose will solve all of
these problems by changing the tools Americans live by, but keeping the standard of living at current
levels.
The human impact on earth has spawned much research and implementation on renewable energy
systems (RES), not only in America but other countries as well. RES are sources of energy which are not
expected to be depleted in a timeframe relative to the human race, and are not detrimental to the earth (no
carbon emissions, waste, etc). Such systems include solar, wind, geothermal, and nuclear energy among
others. We will use RES to achieve our goals.