For Climate Action
Qiuchen Gao
Renewable, Shareable, Walkable, Livable:
Delivering a Sustainable City by Promoting Renewal Energy Sharing
Defining the Problem:
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Transportation, especially the small private vehicle which has huge amount with low capacity to contain people, has always been a big proportion of green house gas emissions for a long time. According to the data, the one third of green house gas is emitted by vehicles, and about half of transit emission was emitted by personal cars and light trucks. Meanwhile, sharing economy has gradually developed and became to a main stream in US, as well as in China, as an efficient way to maximum the availability based on limited resources like sharing cars or bikes, co-housing. To reduce the GHG emissions as well as to develop a low carbon economy, the car-sharing is a vital way to reduce amount of personal vehicles. Meanwhile, sharing economy has gradually developed and became to a main stream in US, as well as in China, as a efficient way to maximum the availability based on limited resources like sharing cars or bikes, co-housing.
Alternatives in car ownership by trip length in China
The current context of vehicles’ alternatives in China is very different from USA. Most of citizens trip between 5 to 15 miles with public transportation such as subway, and bus. As for long distance, fewer people are willing to choose driving on accounting for the high coverage of public transportation network. Meanwhile, the renewal sharing cars have been the main force of alternative of crowded public transit.
Development of renewal energy car sharing in China
In US, the traditional car sharing still accounts for the majority of market, versus renewal energy car-sharing has already been dominant in China. The drawing shows the time of achieving CO2 emission peak value in different cities in China, as well as the cities where had the car-sharing in market. And the car-sharing has occupied more than 40 cities all over the countries.
Hypothesis: Where will the sharing economy, sharing mobility bring us to?
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The new type of living model providing an opportunity or an alternative for all age group to start a new lifestyle with lower carbon emissions, led to build a more sustainable and resilient community. As for illustrating the influencing mechanism of sustainable lifestyle and resilient cities, I came up with 8 indicators which all interacted each others as a whole social-ecosystem.
This system, shown below, consists of reinforcing and balancing loops. The most interesting one for me is the complicated relationship between public transportation and ride sharing. Once the amount of people who utilized bus or train increases, it would be more people walk to work, leading to fewer usage of personal vehicles and fewer fossil fuels. In this way, citizens will have no desire to buy a car and have more chance to use car sharing service. However, with the good accessibility to the sharing car, they probably prefer to drive rather than use public transportation, which constructed as a balancing loop.
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There is no doubt that compact community led to higher density of residents, indicating that this block would be safer. In this case, people are willing to be involve in the public transportation as well as bike sharing and car sharing. More sharing mobility also leads to less private vehicles and contributes to more public commuting mode, which is an enforcing loop to construct a self-sustain community independent from outside resource provision.
Even though it is a complex model with diverse dynamics, renewal energy car sharing always a robust leverage point to delivery a renewable, walkable, livable city, establishing a harmonious symbiotic relationship with the ecosystem.
Hypothesis: Dynamic System Model
Proposing a Solution: Living, Sharing, Surviving
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My proposal focuses on delivering a resilient and self-sustainable world based on facilitating renewal energy vehicles sharing. The renewal energy shared vehicle, like solar cars or hybrid cars, is the most potential and ecological significance in all kinds of ride sharing. According to the data, for every additional share car, there are 13 fewer fossil fuel vehicles. Consequently, this approach has been promoted all over the world with subsidies from government.
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In the light of my project, 60% of budget is for renewal energy car sharing program, which is my dominate development. 20% is for constructing concentrated solar thermal plant, which have capacity to support the solar cars’ part. Another 20% of budget focuses on building a more walkable cities, including street furniture (such as movable installations on streets, urban lamps), green infrastructure, urban landscape. In my ideal community, residents or commuters can access to everything they need (like transportation facilities) within 10 minutes walkable distance and maximum the utilization of resources. They would no need to use their personal cars since it is easy and cheap to use shared cars, and contributed to delivery a better world without GHG emissions.
Operation Pattern
The core of car sharing lies in dividing the right of use and ownership of resources, transferring the right of use of physical objects, segment time or specific space with the help of the “platform economy” generated by Internet and mobile Internet technology, blurring the boundary between private and public, and thus maximizing the utilization efficiency.
Vision of future
In the not-to-distance future, every citizens will easily access to the renewal energy sharing cars. To propose a sustainable and compact community, on account of not everyone will go out at the same time, one community or neighborhood could share limited amount of this kind of vehicles to reduce the GHG emissions, which every residents have the capacity to log in the system and check the location of available cars before going out.