Impact of urbanization and climate warming on energy consumption in large cities

This article considers the urban heat island effect, taking into account peculiarities of energy consumption in large cities. It is shown that energy demand in large cities must be planned, taking into account of the seasonal asymmetry of the impact of anthropogenic heat fluxes on energy demand of the urban economy in the warm and cold seasons of the year. Together with the heat island effect, climate changes in Russian cities should decrease the overall energy demand due to space heating and air conditioning. At the same time, the increasing energy share used for air conditioning always remains one or two orders of magnitude smaller than the energy share used for space heating.