H.O.M.E commenced in 2014 with a collaborative design investigation with the University of Liechtenstein and Liquife Systems Group, Vienna as well as the European Space Technology Centre (ESTEC) at the Europen Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. We explored realistic yet creative scenarios and habitation pathways to facilitate a colony of 1’000 over a period of 10 years. The key mission was to understand the requirements for totally regenerative and habitability building settlements on earth: greenhouse gas sequestering, pollution managing, oxygen producing, biodiversity / volume enhancing and entirely renewable energy powered houses, buildings, towns, cities and regions.

We searched for and identified one of the most destructive of the many planet killing machines active today: the 3-Gigawatt brown coal combustion and associated mining fields of Jänschwalde in the Brandenburg region of Lusatia near Berlin, Germany. The focus was of finding strategies to end brown coal mining and power conversion, and to regenerate region, area and power station into life regenerating, prosperity enhancing, carbon sequestering, oxygen producing, biological diversity and vitality enhancing, ground and surface water rehabilitating settlements, landscape strategies and economic development programs. Collaboration and support by Green Liga, Protestant Church, Cottbus Chamber of Commerce, Spreewald Foundation and others

We conducted participatory design workshops with local communities, businesses, government and non-governmental organisations, to envision sustainable plans for the region of Lusatia.

Urban Energy Transition, second edition, is the definitive science and practice-based compendium of energy transformations in the global urban system. This volume is a timely and rich resource for all, as citizens, companies and their communities, from remote villages to megacities and metropolitan regions, rapidly move away from fossil fuel and nuclear power, to renewable energy as civic infrastructure investment, source of revenue and prosperity, and existential resilience strategy.

This document sketches out the options and the processes that have started to transform urban energy systems and that will power our cities in the very near future.

Climate change and dwindling global resources are challenging the professional practice, demanding new design and planning approaches that achieve more with less. This rich volume for designers, architects, planners, policy makers and academics alike explores the current paradigm shift and illustrates how new thinking can convert investments in urban infrastructure, land use and development into resilient and enduring support systems for human and environmental prosperity.

Current practice, projects and plans for companies, individuals, communities, cities and countries determined to be entirely independent from fossil fuel and nuclear power.

This compendium of 28 chapters presents perspectives that are both local and international in scope and relevance: perspectives from 18 countries in both the developed and developing world.