Cabot Institute blog

Sustainable Development Goal 11 outlines a global ambition to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. It is arguably one of the most important of the 17 recently agreed Goals, but we’re unlikely to reach it in most parts of the world by 2030.
The importance of Goal 11 stems from global demographic trends. As Figure 1 illustrates, over 50% of the world’s population already lives in towns and cities, and that percentage is set to rise to 66% by 2050. In fact, nearly all projected population growth between now and 2050 is expected to be absorbed in towns and cities, and the vast majority of this growth will happen in Africa and Asia (see Figure 2).
These trends mean that when it comes to eliminating poverty and hunger, improving health and education services, ensuring universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation, promoting economic growth with decent employment opportunities, and creating ‘responsible consumption and production patter…

The energy market is changing. Although, when I say changing, what I really mean it is moving back to how it was in the beginning, in a manner of speaking. When electricity was first brought to the UK, the generators were placed close to loads to reduce transmission losses. We then moved to a more centralised grid, with a smaller number of large power stations, and energy shipped all over the country through a high voltage transmission network. With the more recent increase in renewable penetration, roof-top solar, small- and large-scale storage, all of which is distributed across the country, we are shifting back to the distributed generation paradigm. Power is not only flowing from the centralised generation facilities, but also from traditional consumers as well. This creates a large number of new problems to solve.
This year’s Smart Energy Marketplace, organised by Regen, discussed this shift from centralised to distributed generation, with panellists and delegates from large ind…