ABSTRACT
Energy policy objectives are essentially twofold: to eliminate the negative economic impact of profligacy, and to develop and exploit new technologies in the energy/environment sector. This chapter describes four complementary application areas for energy and environment IT that have the potential to change situation radically: digital cities; rational planning; virtual design; and energy services. Two actions required to assist the smooth transition to a non-fossil fuel economy: a greater level of energy efficiency is required to extend the life of the fossil fuels and re-shape demand profiles to better accommodate the introduction of new and renewable energy(RE) technologies; and the widespread adoption of new and RE systems is required at both the distributed and embedded scales. To assist with interpretation, Geographical Information System(GIS) may be employed to overlay the energy and environment information on conventional types of information like street layouts, power cable routings.
