Asking the right questions in an age of uncertainty: what if energy was free of charge?

While climate and demographic changes are becoming complex challenges for cities and their multicultural populations, energy demands in urban environments account for 70% of the global consumption, and thus drastic changes are still needed in ‘the way that we build and manage the urban environment’ (Agarwala et al. 2015, see also Weller et al. 2017, Rockström et al. 2017, Henriques 2017). With this in mind, several countries worldwide have developed national strategies to produce 100% renewable energy in the forthcoming decades, with great investments in solar, wind, hydro and biomass generation and also in smart networks for distribution and management. Nonetheless, recent examples in Germany (Geier 2016) and Chile (Dezem and Quiroga 2016) also show that is possible to produce so much electric power making prices go negative. In this presentation, we will review recent examples where the renewable production overcame the consumption, and discuss related energy policies. Finally we suggest avenues for future research, particularly in renewable micro-generation in the built environment.