[This is an EXCERPT of an article in Journal of the American Planning Association that is subscription-only. Access the rest of the study here. -Ed.]

A generation ago, planners helped site a centralized energy supply infrastructure of power plants, electric transmission lines, refineries, and pipelines. Recent attention has shifted to decentralized supplies and the effects of transportation, land use, and buildings on energy demand. It is time for planners to pay attention to the new spatial structure of energy systems.

Emerging energy technologies ate bringing planners a new set of issues. The supply-oriented framework from engineering economics within which energy planning has traditionally been conducted may be useful for siting large refineries, power plants, and transmission corridors, but it is not helpful for mitigating conflicts at the site level, encouraging new technology adoptions, managing the demand for energy, or, especially, coordinating the diverse users of smaller, local energy facilities. Purpose: I provide an alternative conceptual framework for thinking about emerging energy planning tasks. I highlight factors not considered in the traditional model, and introduce terminology for characterizing key characteristics of the changing energy economy.

Results and conclusions: I propose that planners use network models to think about energy systems and focus especially on nodes where energy is converted from one form to another. Understanding the scale, scope, commodification, and agency of such nodes, and whether and when these attributes are open to change, can improve energy planning decisions for traditional energy investments such as power plants and for energy initiatives such as wind farms, rooftop solar systems, energy-efficient buildings, cogeneration, compact growth, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should do more than just mitigate energy facility siting conflicts. They should also identify points of governmental leverage on private decision makers, keep track of evolving technologies, bundle energy users with different temporal demand profiles, and help build smarter energy networks. Focusing on energy networks and their nodes should help planners see how they can be most effective.

Photo credit: Daniel Ullrich