Decentralized Infrastructure

Source

From the Danish policy report: A Whole Systems Framework for Sustainable Production and Consumption

Description

"Centralized infrastructure such as power stations often require extremely large capital investments and many years to build. In many cases these same services can be provided via a mixture of demand-reducing end-use efficiency (such as insulation and efficient appliances) and local, small-scale resource provisioning (for example, solar panels). The resulting avoided cost represents a crucial but widely unrecognized source of capital, particularly for the developing world.

As an example, the manufacture of end-use, energy-saving technologies such as compact-florescent lamps (CFL) or super-efficient windows takes around a thousand times less capital than expanding the electricity supply.

Furthermore, capital from demand reduction is returned ten times faster than it would be for building new electrical infrastructure. Combined with the lower capital requirements, a CFL plant is 10,000 times more efficient than expanded infrastructure.

By reducing demand, power stations and other forms of infrastructure can be built smaller, closer to the end-user, or eliminated entirely. Shifting to a demand-reduction model can provide people with services they want and need in a manner that consumes fewer resources, is flexible and sustainable, and costs less. Historically, providing power and water to large and rapidly growing populations often necessitates huge development projects. These can be expensive, requiring money from multinational lending institutions; can generate tremendous environmental damage and displacement of people; can under-perform expectations; and, by the nature of their size, are inflexible to changes in demand. While the generation of much-needed jobs is often an attractive feature of such projects, in the long run they may be less sustainable than smaller, more efficient, flexible, and regionally appropriate modes of delivering the same services.

Two terms, “decentralized” and “distributed,” are used (roughly) interchangeably to describe this form of infrastructure. The case for distributed electricity infrastructure is exhaustively demonstrated in Small Is Profitable by A.B. Lovins, et al.

Decentralized infrastructure in developed countries

Developed countries can also leverage the benefits of distributed generation as a flexible, cost-effective alternative to replacing aging, centralized energy infrastructures. By reducing overall energy consumption, and thus reducing demand at "the end of the pipe" the distributed generation system mitigates the need to build new energy capacity. In situations that demand a reliable, uninterrupted supply of energy or water, such as data centers or hospitals, decentralizing and distributing the source of both improves source security, reduces the chance of interruption, and allows for better control over locally appropriate efficiency measures.

Examples

Decentralized Infrastructure Housing

Housing construction often requires six different kinds of centralized infrastructure (potable water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management, electricity, gas, and communications) before construction can start. These costs are often externalized; that is, they are not included in the prices of the residences. In contrast, Decentralized Infrastructure Housing (DIH) provides all of these essential services, using such features as energy efficiency, photovoltaic generation, composting toilets, and a raft of other emerging sustainable technologies.

Obstacles

Because Decentralized Infrastructure Housing actually looks very different from conventional housing, adoption is problematic—despite the fact that actual quality of life for residents may be higher and total-systems development costs significantly lower.

Likewise, large, centralized development projects that supply energy and water often represent an enormous sunk capital cost that makes energy and water cheap to the end-user. In such cases, incentives to reduce energy consumption may be extremely low for government, utilities, and the individual citizen. Intervention, then, must happen at both the building level, and at the level of planning how infrastructure services are provided in the first place." (http://files.howtolivewiki.com/A%20Whole%20Systems%20Framework%20for%20Sustainable%20Production%20and%20Consumption.pdf)