Technology Investment for the Development Sector
By building decarbonization plans backed by legitimate technology pathways, the Net-Zero City Project aims to help corporations reduce their carbon footprint while capitalizing on revenue building opportunities. We plan to use equity investment to direct resources towards overall profit for each of our partners and the applicants who participate in our Project.
The goal is to start at an NPV of zero when you’re finished developing the property and start making money from there. In a corporate city, taxes go towards the same infrastructure projects, but can also go towards dividend payments to those who invest in its success. Similarly, each of our partners will have the opportunity to gain from participating with us, either through partnerships, developing the Net-Zero City Project, or by acting on one of our committees.
Examples of how various green technologies can be integrated into our structure can be found below.
Key Development Areas:
Committee 1: Infrastructure, Project Management, Commercial & Industrial Development, Urban Planning & Architectural Design
Elements that have so far been separated in their execution due to existing city budgets can be combined to create an infrastructure that promotes lifestyle through its systemic integration. In a new, planned, City of the Future, the defining characteristics of these newer development priorities can be combined to encourage innovation:
- Digital: Where the newest computing technologies are used for critical services and infrastructure.
- Intelligent: Features of creative learning and knowledge are applied to invite residents of highly skilled professionals, promote research and innovation implementation in business, and assure network building between education and business institutions.
- Ubiquitous: With the help of the newest computing technologies, providing accessibility and infrastructure services where any citizen can get any service anywhere and anytime, through any device.
- Smart: Innovative industries with highly educated, skilled, and creative inhabitants work with city government and citizens using new channels of communication for citizens in everyday life.
In the future, infrastructure growth will be based not on infrastructure growth, but its ability to enhance innovation, economic vitality, safety, attractiveness, a healthy environment, and vibrant society. The Net-Zero City Project will culminate in a design that moves away from grid-style development to a modular city, essentially many cities within a city that will provide services to residents to improve their functionality, prosperity, and health.
Committee 2: Energy, Renewable Energy, Energy Management, Energy Transmission, Micro-Grid Technology
Energy models have shifted as the technology to produce it continues to advance. For existing infrastructure, a hybrid model based on fossil fuels and renewable energy is becoming part of the standard. Is there a combination of technologies that can produce net-zero emissions for a city built from scratch? Theoretical models say yes. What is that combination? For a new city with no energy grid, is using a series of micro-grids more efficient? These, and other questions can be answered collaboratively by assembling a team of experts from every style of energy development.
For the city development plans of the Net-Zero City Project, can water, waste, and other infrastructure contribute to the energy that will be used throughout the city? Can we use geothermal technologies, micro-hydro pumps, biofuel, and other tech to move electricity through the city and use it for different purposes?
As a cornerstone of the Foundational Blocks of city building, and an aspect that nothing else can be built without, facilitating the collaboration of various types of energy generators, storage, maintenance, and tracking will be key to the development of this city.
Committee 3: Water, Clean Water Management, Desalination
Water generation and use is a very interesting Foundational Block. Water has so many uses and can be implemented cross-functionally to intersect across a variety of functions. For example, using water in buildings as heating and cooling systems has reduced the overall carbon footprint of individual buildings; Micro-hydro technology can aid in energy generation and consumption. What impact could extensive water infrastructure underneath the city produce? What water functions, once used, can be recycled, and reused for another purpose? What types of hydrology and bioretention techniques can be used to enhance the sustainability of our water use?
Committee 4: Agriculture, Sustainable Good Supply, Biodiversity, Revegetation & Habitat Preservation, Urban Greening
The environmental assessment component of the Net-Zero City project will also contain questions about what resources will be required to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the life cycle of the city. Can the city be used to preserve the natural environment of the city? What technology, energy, and water-use will be required to achieve this? Can habitats be restored, water functions reused, and sustained by using biophilic design to cause revegetation? Can sustainably sourced biomass be used at scale to produce biofuels, electricity, and heat? The goal here is to treat nature and habitat development as a balance sheet item and link protection to production.
Committee 5: Transportation
Transportation design will be highly dependent on the style of transportation we decide to support in the city. The committees will be key players in determining how best to use the resources that are available and the technology that has applied to create a technology plan that aligns with the energy plan and design elements of the city. Transportation infrastructure will need to align with the agriculture plan and environmental assessment to ensure optimal urban greening, and biodiversity protection.
Committee 6: Waste, Waste Management, Landfill Elimination, Recycling & Reuse Technology
Waste management is one of the most critical components of the circular economy. Thirty (30) to forty (40) percent of today’s solid waste is created through the construction and maintenance of the built environment. In order to effectively develop a system that is restorative and regenerative, products must be in play for as long as possible. In a sustainable development, everything that is produced is transferred somewhere else, continuously. In a complete analysis of waste management, detailing each wasteful component and integrating technology to transfer, recycle, or reuse that component will help preserve resources. These resources can then help to generate energy-producing products or further other functions that can replenish themselves through several lifecycles before they end their usefulness.
Committee 7: Carbon Capture Technology, Carbon-Emissions Tracking & Analysis Technology, Smart City Technology, Sustainable Technology Integration
Even after the integration of green technologies, certain residual emissions can’t be reduced, due to economic, operational, or procedural limitations. Carbon capture and carbon curing solutions will need to be used to neutralize these residual emissions and achieve a complete net-zero solution. Carbon removal technologies can create bioenergy with carbon energy and storage solutions, and direct air capture and storage solutions. Using carbon emissions monitoring, reporting, verification, and tracking technology, we can put the final pin in the network of solutions that will create a comprehensive net-zero technology blueprint. A transparent and ambitious decarbonization claim that prioritizes internal emission reductions while offsetting others is the key to upholding credibility.
Committee 8: Policy Development & Implementation, Culture, Lifestyle & Environment
Education and policy development will be a key factor to helping sustainable communities thrive. As new technologies propel policy development, and urban design brings people closer to cohesion with nature, the culture and lifestyle of people living in sustainable developments will change. Building a thriving cultural change will be a conscious effort put together by both community members and the leaders of change who will set things in motion.
Committee 9: Safety, Security, & Risk Management, Emergency Services
Technical progress has already resulted in a series of questions arising about the safety and security of the individual and the community as new measures are implemented. The necessity of safety development cannot be under emphasized in a sustainable development as each of the technologies described in committees 1-8 are implemented. The factors around safety infrastructure cross each category of development: natural, architectural, social, environmental, technological, infrastructural, and urban. This committee will focus on developing structures to generate an overall positive impact on people, buildings, facilities, and nature-made objects that are implemented in the city development. A deep and critical analysis of each technology, its implementation, and requirements is required to ensure that as the development is completed and people begin to live in and commute around the development, human health is positively affected, and community is enhanced.
Applying for the Net-Zero City Project
The purpose of the Net-Zero City Project is to design infrastructure that has a net-zero carbon footprint. We will be answering the following questions:
Which technologies are the most appropriate to use, and how can they be integrated to achieve emissions reductions while ensuring reliability, affordability, and generating industry-level competitiveness for each technology?
Further, how will these technologies work together across functions, and how much land, power, and resources will be required to develop and run the city?
The objectives of the Net-Zero City Project:
Discovering and utilizing the newest possible clean technology available in the world today.
To design from scratch, infrastructure that integrates technologies to deliver net-zero emissions.
Develop multiple avenues for profit and sustainability into the structure and development of the city.
Create a comprehensive technology integration blueprint for our partners and collaborators to use in their development projects ongoingly.
Committee members will be selected from the applicants who submit their applications by the April 25, 2024 deadline, and who meet the minimum criteria below:
Qualified to participate.
Can afford to participate (aka, their company has enough money to put into both participating on the committee and/or panel, and to implement any technology that they are recommending be used as part of the project).
The applicant’s company is at minimum partially financed, or they have received grant funding to move their projects along.
Further information is available in the application package or on our website at www.netzerocityproject.com.
If you and/or your company fit within these categories, or you have vendor partners who are likely to fit, please download the application form and submit your application as soon as possible. You can download the application form by clicking here.
We are excited to partner with and invest in the technologies that will be selected by the Net-Zero City Project committees. The results of these collaborations will form the benchmark for North American sustainability strategies and design.