Facilitating a carbon neutral transition in Kyoto: Initiatives on rooftop photovoltaics integrated with electric vehicles

Abstract

With nearly 70 % of the global population expected to live in urban areas by 2050, cities will need to manage energy transitions to achieve ambitious carbon neutrality goals. As the current rate of decarbonization in cities is too slow to achieve these ambitious goals, feasible pathways toward deep decarbonization are becoming increasingly urgent. This paper synthesizes a technical and economic analysis with more qualitative methods (transition theory, thick description, and action research) to examine the potential for a key set of niche technologies to drive carbon neutral transitions in Kyoto, Japan: rooftop photovoltaics (PVs) integrated with electric vehicles (EVs) as batteries at the city scale (“SolarEV City Concept”). The article examines the opportunities and challenges of using the Kyoto Miraimon Project to establish a community-scale “PV + EV” system that can inject momentum into transitions in Kyoto. The platform accelerated transitions by supporting the adoption of innovative technologies and aligning key stakeholder interests around regime-level government climate goals. With increasing EV penetration globally and the rapid uptake of PV technologies, the windows of opportunities for deep decarbonization of cities through rooftop PVs integrated with EVs are gradually opening.