What Does It Take to Turn a City Solar?

The viability of solar-powered cities in 2018 and beyond

Written by Benjamin Mallett

‘We can’t afford to wait.’ This is the warning being voiced by Huang Ming, a man known throughout China as ‘the sun king’ for his unwavering belief in the current potential of solar energy and the visionary behind an area of the city of DeZhou which has come to be titled the Solar Valley.[1]

Huang Ming's Sun & Moon Microemissions Mansion in DeZhou, China

Indeed, in order to overturn the argument lauded by influential sources such as the Huffington Post that ‘funding wind and solar energy is inefficient,’ it is the success of towns and cities fuelled entirely by renewable sources which will ultimately restructure public and business perceptions of the efficacy of solar and wind technologies.[2] This is the inspiration behind the Huang Ming’s Solar Valley project. Tangible proof of the viability of solar-supplied buildings designed with their energy consumption and output in-mind.

Not all successful solar projects were created with such noble aims in mind, however. Dale Ross, Mayor of Georgetown in the state of Texas, is not only a self-professed ‘good little Republican’ – a right-wing fiscal conservative who voted Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election – he is also the driving force behind a city located in the dead-centre of America’s oil and gas heartland meeting 100% of its power demands through renewable energy. The city management’s decision in 2015 to source all of the energy usage of Georgetown and its population of 65,000 from renewables was not made on account of green ideals, though. Instead, when faced with renewing the city’s energy contract, Ross and his staff realised that energy sourced via solar and wind would prove considerably cheaper and less volatile over the succeeding 25 years than if they continued to rely upon oil and natural gas.[3] Since 2008, and after sourcing its power from a wind farm 500-miles away in Amarillo and a soon-to-be completed Texan solar farm, energy prices in Georgetown have fallen from 11.4 cents per kilowatt hour to 8.5 cents in 2017.[4]

Texas' Amarillo Solar Farm

Whilst Georgetown is rare in the USA as a city fully committed to renewable energy sourcing, it is far from the only example globally of ambitious solar and wind projects being applied to large settlements. In Mexico, the city of La Paz with its population of 215,000 saw the economic sense in receiving 65% of its energy usage from Aura I, an expansive solar plant covering 100 hectares which was built and runs with zero public or private subsidies (reliance on subsidies being a common critique of renewable programmes).[5]

Perhaps even more astoundingly, and of great enough significance to potentially warrant a more active global consideration of solar and wind energy, the ecological disaster-site of Dubai is preparing at Expo2020 to showcase its plans to reduce its hefty carbon footprint to near-zero by 2050, primarily via photovoltaic technologies.[6] For those doubtful of the meaningful intent of the UAE, and perhaps rightfully so considering the 30-year time frame being attached to Dubai’s renewable project, one needs only examine two ambitious schemes already under construction directly outside of the city: the Sustainable City and a colossal desert solar plant. The Sustainable City in particular, a zero-energy settlement built in a region with numerous obstacles to human living, potentially heralds a further step towards realising a financially viable and waste-limiting alternative to city-living. Merely by existing (and hopefully thriving) it could perform wonders in deconstructing existing renewable-sceptic mindsets across the globe.[7]

This remains the overarching aim of China’s ‘sun king’ - or as he is alternatively known, the ‘solar energy mad-man.’ In many ways, Huang Ming’s story is one with surprising parallels to the ecological change being rolled-out in Dubai, albeit with a more personal flourish. Having worked most of his adult life in the oil industry, Huang Ming was finally encouraged to quit his job and follow his ambition of pursuing his Solar Valley project on the eve of his marriage. In 1985, Ming’s excitement at showing his newly betrothed the beautiful Lake Tai of his home town in Wuxi was uncontainable. Upon returning to the lake, however, Ming recalls how ‘all we could see was black and smelly water. I was so ashamed.’ This revelation was followed soon after by the birth of his daughter, galvanising Ming to change the world he lived in for the good of his daughter and her generation by investing the entirety of his life saving’s into the Solar Valley project, which now supplies 552,000 residents with 98% of their energy from strategically aligned solar arrays.[8] These are built into statues, roofs, and perhaps most impressively into the specially created Sun and Moon Micro-Emissions Mansion designed by Ming himself, which uses 10% of the energy consumed by conventional buildings due simply to foresight during its design.

Admittedly, Huang Ming’s scheme hasn’t been quite as successful as he had first hoped. Whilst on a micro-level his Solar Valley project has proven wonderfully effective at supplying the city of DeZhou, thanks in large part to the increasingly cheap and efficient solar panels being designed in China, Ming has unfortunately failed in inspiring other cities across China to follow his example. This undoubtedly serves as a lost opportunity. Especially for cities on and around the equator, such as Nairobi in Kenya, Khartoum in Sudan or Harbin in China, only 0.2% of each of the above city’s areas needs to be allocated to solar arrays in order to 100% fulfil their energy needs through renewable energy. For a city such as London, this proportion is admittedly larger at 8.8% of the city’s size, or 138km squared.[9] Such calculations do fail to consider the benefits of more suitable renewables to the UK, however, primarily wind.

Overall, as happens all too often in discussions on renewable technologies, the practicality of the 'solar city' should not be relegated to the future. Solar cities exist, and are being constructed across the world, today. From the examples listed above – Dale Ross’ Georgetown, Heung Ming’s Solar Valley and Dubai’s Sustainable City – a number of important lessons are apparent not only for those outside of the sustainable movement, but for those within it also. Firstly, in order to affect change, the importance of the financial viability of renewable energies cannot be understated. The opportunity to better one’s financial position can and will attract even those who don’t share the sustainable aims of ecowarriors and ecology students alike, and produce new allies such as Dale Ross where political allegiances might have previously obscured sustainable aims. As Ross, puts it himself, ‘The revolution is here.’ Secondly, the ability of the individual to affect the type of dramatic change which is needed in the energy sector is not as insignificant as one might believe. Today, a large focus and responsibility is still placed upon groups and organisations, the likes of Greenpeace or the EPA. As Huang Ming has shown, however, even a sufficiently motivated individual can affect substantial positive change in the plight of solar energy enrolment.

As Heung Ming understands it: ‘We can’t afford to wait.’