Achieving Zero Carbon in Sustainable Communities

Contemporary urban lifestyle emphasises green living and encourages people to estimate their environmental impact and to reduce their carbon footprint. It is important that carbon footprint of users and their demand is quantifiable and measured to create scenarios for design of buildings in various neighbourhoods forming clusters. This chapter presents an alternative approach for developing sustainable communities using activity-based design principles to quantify the energy demand per activity performed on a daily basis by members of various communities rather than making assumptions on space requirements using the traditional functional-based design approach. It starts with an overview of the key concepts and a set of principles for the development of sustainable communities based on achieving an equilibrium between local renewable resources (e.g. wind, water, solar) and users demand for alternative energy. Making smart use of renewable energy sources (e.g. solar, wind, water and utility grid) is becoming increasingly critical as the cost of electricity from conventional sources continues to rise sharply over the next years due to increase in global demand for energy and economic growth. The chapter discusses how energy demand consumption analysis per person based on different activities is used in evaluating overall energy need, space and land requirements in the community.