Evaluation of smart eco-friendly public transport options in coastal cities: towards a green future for the city of Southampton

Abstract

Coastal regions are of economic importance to global economies and host a disproportionate amount of global population. Coastal zones account for only 2% of the world’s total land area but approximately 13% of the world’s urban population lives in these zones. The continuous growth of population and associated climate change can adversely affect these regions in every aspect. Necessary action needs to be taken to protect coastal zones and coastal cities and make them sustainable.

Transport is one of the important sectors in a coastal city that can be seriously affected by climate change and ever increasing load from urban growth. Though development of sustainable/eco-friendly transport for cities is challenging but new innovative ideas are emerging. Use of renewable energy sources in transport is gaining popularity both in public and government sectors. Although the current scenario for use of renewables in transport is challenging, the analysis in this report highlights the outlook for the future. The study proposes an integrated transport system supported by a hybrid hydrogen plant from renewable energy (wind and solar). The work provides new perspective regarding implementation of sustainable transport in the city of Southampton, UK. The main contributions of this work are assessment of the availability of renewable energy (wind and solar), annual energy requirements and cost analysis.

The findings of this study show that for a conceptual network of public transport it is economically feasible to produce and use hydrogen as an alternative to diesel. One of the important highlight of this work has been that the energy generated from solar photovoltaic could alone support the entire hydrogen demand for the conceptual transport system.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Agnieszka S. Dzielendziak: orcid.org/0000-0002-9465-4157

ORCID for P.A. Wilson: orcid.org/0000-0002-6939-682X

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