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Abstract
Mitigation of climate change demands significant changes in the way we design and manage urban areas and individual buildings. Calls for greater resource efficiency and urban self-sufficiency alongside rising energy prices are likely to stimulate the market for renewable energy production to be embedded in the urban fabric. Rooftops will increasingly come to be viewed as a resource which will have value both financially and in terms of urban sustainability. The detrimental impact of overshadowing on rooftop energy production is likely to lead to calls for a review of regulation in respect of building siting. This article reviews the key issues involved in revising our perspectives on rooftops. In particular, it addresses the legal and policy mechanisms which may be appropriate and explores planning and other approaches to addressing this new resource availability question. International models and local case studies are used to arrive at recommendations for future action.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on a presentation at the Property Rights and Sustainability conference hosted by the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law, Auckland, in April 2009. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of Australian Research Council Linkage Grant LP0883493 ‘An Integrated Model for the Assessment of Urban Sustainability’. The author is indebted to his fellow contributor, David Cole, for his contribution to the development of this article.
Notes
1. Solar thermal panels are designed to capture solar radiation which is usually used to heat water for use in buildings.
2. Solar photovoltaic panels convert solar radiation into direct current electricity which is then converted to alternating current using a device known as an inverter. The electricity can be used on site or exported to the grid network to be used elsewhere.