Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Training Course

Duration 10 days 20 modules · 65 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Urban Planning Manager, Municipal Energy Officer and others
Fee from USD 2,200 KSh 190,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-ETR-030

Before you join: Participants should have professional experience in infrastructure, energy, urban planning, real estate, public policy, engineering, finance or sustainability.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Cities must expand housing, mobility, water, waste and public services while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, air pollution and exposure to heat, flooding and energy-price volatility. Infrastructure decisions made today can lock in fuel use, operating costs and land-use patterns for decades. Public agencies, utilities, developers and financiers need plans that connect renewable energy, efficient buildings, low-carbon transport, circular resource systems and climate resilience with credible delivery and investment routes.

This course examines how to plan, assess and deliver sustainable urban infrastructure programmes. Participants work through urban energy baselining, demand forecasting, renewable resource screening, distributed energy design, building retrofit prioritisation, electric mobility, district energy, green infrastructure and waste-to-resource options. The course also addresses project economics, greenhouse-gas accounting, procurement, stakeholder engagement, environmental and social risk, and performance monitoring. Participants learn to compare interventions using lifecycle cost, marginal abatement cost, resilience and equity criteria rather than assessing technologies in isolation.

Teaching combines concise technical briefings with municipal, utility and developer cases, group analysis, scenario simulations and structured application planning. Participants progressively build an urban infrastructure transition package for a selected city, district or development area, using data assumptions suited to their own work context. The final deliverable is a prioritised investment and implementation plan containing an emissions baseline, intervention portfolio, financing approach, delivery roadmap, risk register and performance dashboard.

The course suits professionals responsible for city planning, infrastructure investment, energy programmes, real-estate portfolios, public utilities and climate action delivery. It is particularly relevant where teams must turn climate commitments into funded, buildable projects with measurable service, cost and emissions outcomes.

What you will be able to do

  • Construct an urban energy and emissions baseline using activity data and GHG Protocol methods
  • Assess renewable energy, storage and district energy options against technical and financial criteria
  • Prioritise infrastructure interventions using lifecycle cost, marginal abatement cost and equity criteria
  • Prepare a phased urban energy transition roadmap with accountable delivery actions
  • Develop project business cases using cash-flow modelling, sensitivity analysis and risk allocation
  • Apply climate resilience screening to energy, transport, water and public-realm investments
  • Specify procurement, monitoring and verification requirements for sustainable infrastructure projects
  • Present a complete sustainable urban infrastructure investment and implementation plan

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Produce defensible renewable and efficiency investment recommendations for urban decision-makers
  • Apply lifecycle-cost and emissions methods to infrastructure project selection
  • Communicate technical infrastructure choices clearly to finance, planning and community stakeholders
  • Build a reusable city or district transition roadmap for immediate workplace application
  • Strengthen credibility for roles in municipal climate delivery and infrastructure investment

For your organisation

  • Creates a prioritised pipeline of lower-carbon infrastructure projects with defined next actions
  • Improves capital allocation through lifecycle-cost, emissions and resilience appraisal
  • Reduces risk of isolated technology purchases that fail to meet system needs
  • Supports credible climate-action reporting through defined baselines and performance indicators
  • Strengthens coordination between planning, utilities, finance, procurement and asset-management teams

Course modules

20 modules over 10 days

Participants can frame an urban infrastructure transition challenge as a connected energy, service and investment system.

  • Urban metabolism mapping links energy, water, materials, mobility and land use
  • Service-demand drivers behind electricity, cooling, mobility and municipal waste growth
  • Infrastructure lock-in risks from long-lived assets and network investment decisions
  • Systems mapping identifies dependencies between utilities, buildings, transport and public space
  • Policy-to-project pathways convert climate commitments into accountable capital programmes
  • Equity criteria identify distributional effects of tariffs, access and redevelopment

Participants can prepare a defensible baseline for urban energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions.

  • GHG Protocol scopes applied to municipal operations and community-wide inventories
  • Activity-data registers for electricity, fuels, transport, waste and refrigerants
  • Emission-factor selection using national inventories, utilities and fuel suppliers
  • Energy balance tables reconcile supply, conversion losses and final consumption
  • Baseline-year selection accounts for abnormal weather, demand and operating conditions
  • Data-quality scoring records completeness, accuracy, timeliness and verification status

Participants can develop demand scenarios that test infrastructure needs under different growth assumptions.

  • Bottom-up demand forecasts combine floor area, occupancy and equipment intensity
  • Scenario narratives test population growth, land use and technology adoption
  • Peak-load analysis distinguishes annual consumption from network capacity requirements
  • Cooling-demand projections incorporate temperature, humidity, building form and behavioural assumptions
  • Elasticity assumptions estimate tariff, efficiency and modal-shift demand responses
  • Sensitivity tables expose parameters that materially change investment priorities

Participants can screen renewable energy opportunities using resource, site, grid and permitting criteria.

  • Solar photovoltaic yield estimates use irradiation, shading, orientation and performance ratios
  • Wind screening considers resource quality, turbulence, setbacks and aviation constraints
  • Biogas feedstock assessments quantify organics, moisture, contamination and collection reliability
  • Wastewater heat recovery screens flow temperature, heat demand and exchanger feasibility
  • Geospatial screening ranks rooftops, brownfields, car parks and utility corridors
  • Permitting matrices identify land rights, interconnection approvals and environmental consents

Participants can compare distributed energy architectures for reliability, emissions and economic performance.

  • Behind-the-meter generation matches onsite load profiles and tariff structures
  • Battery sizing uses load duration curves, dispatch rules and degradation assumptions
  • Microgrid architectures define critical loads, islanding controls and protection requirements
  • Demand-response programmes target flexible cooling, pumping and charging loads
  • Power-quality requirements address voltage control, harmonics and inverter coordination
  • Resilience metrics measure outage duration, critical-service coverage and recovery time

Participants can prioritise building energy interventions using technical savings and lifecycle-cost evidence.

  • Energy-use intensity benchmarks compare building types, climate zones and operating hours
  • Walkthrough audit protocols identify envelope, lighting, controls and plant inefficiencies
  • Retrofit bundles sequence passive measures before equipment replacement decisions
  • Measurement and verification plans apply International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol options
  • ISO 50001 energy management principles structure operational improvement cycles
  • Lifecycle-cost analysis includes capital, energy, maintenance, replacement and residual values

Participants can assess whether district heating or cooling offers a viable urban energy solution.

  • Thermal density mapping identifies viable customer clusters and anchor loads
  • Load diversity factors determine network capacity and plant-sizing requirements
  • Heat-source screening compares waste heat, geothermal, solar thermal and heat pumps
  • Network temperature regimes affect losses, equipment compatibility and future expansion
  • Concession structures allocate customer, construction, fuel and performance risks
  • Tariff design balances affordability, connection incentives and long-term cost recovery

Participants can identify mobility investments that reduce emissions while maintaining accessible urban services.

  • Avoid-shift-improve framework structures land use, mode choice and vehicle interventions
  • Transport emissions inventories separate vehicle kilometres, occupancy, fuel and congestion effects
  • Electric bus planning covers route duty cycles, charging windows and depot capacity
  • Charging-network plans align dwell time, grid capacity and user access
  • Complete-streets design balances walking, cycling, transit, freight and universal access
  • Fleet transition models compare total cost, residual value and maintenance requirements

Participants can identify resource-recovery opportunities across municipal water and waste systems.

  • Water-energy nexus analysis quantifies pumping, treatment and distribution energy demand
  • Non-revenue water reduction prioritises pressure management, metering and leak detection
  • Material flow analysis traces organics, recyclables, residues and contamination pathways
  • Source-separation programmes match collection design with downstream processing capacity
  • Anaerobic digestion appraisal compares feedstock yields, digestate routes and biogas uses
  • Circular procurement specifications set recycled content, reparability and take-back requirements

Participants can integrate climate resilience and nature-based measures into infrastructure planning decisions.

  • Climate hazard screening identifies heat, flood, drought, storm and wildfire exposures
  • ISO 14090 principles guide adaptation planning, uncertainty treatment and review cycles
  • Criticality assessments rank assets by service consequences and recovery requirements
  • Green-blue infrastructure manages runoff through retention, infiltration and evapotranspiration
  • Urban heat mapping targets shade, cool surfaces and tree-canopy interventions
  • Adaptation pathways sequence no-regret measures, thresholds and future investment triggers

Participants can assemble coordinated infrastructure measures into a coherent transition portfolio.

  • Intervention longlists distinguish policy measures, capital projects and operational improvements
  • Theory-of-change models connect activities, outputs, outcomes and intended impacts
  • Marginal abatement cost curves compare emissions reductions and incremental costs
  • Multi-criteria analysis weights cost, carbon, resilience, equity and deliverability
  • Dependency mapping identifies enabling projects, shared assets and sequencing constraints
  • Portfolio heat maps expose concentration risks across technologies, locations and sponsors

Participants can build and interpret financial appraisals for sustainable urban infrastructure projects.

  • Discounted cash-flow models calculate net present value and internal rate of return
  • Capital-expenditure estimates separate development, equipment, construction and contingency costs
  • Operating-cost models include energy, labour, maintenance, insurance and land charges
  • Sensitivity analysis tests tariffs, demand, energy prices, grants and construction costs
  • Levelised cost calculations compare renewable generation and energy-service alternatives
  • Affordability analysis assesses household, municipal and small-business tariff impacts

Participants can select financing structures suited to project cash flows and public objectives.

  • Municipal capital budgets distinguish recurring expenditure from asset-investment funding
  • Public-private partnership structures allocate design, construction, demand and operating risks
  • Energy service company contracts link payments to verified energy savings
  • Green bond frameworks connect eligible expenditures, reporting and use-of-proceeds controls
  • Blended-finance structures combine grants, concessional debt, guarantees and commercial capital
  • Revenue-stack design combines tariffs, availability payments, credits and service fees

Participants can draft procurement approaches that protect value, performance and public accountability.

  • Outcome-based specifications define service levels, emissions targets and availability requirements
  • Technical specifications set interoperability, metering, cybersecurity and maintenance requirements
  • Bid-evaluation matrices score price, quality, carbon, social value and delivery capacity
  • Whole-life value assessment compares acquisition cost with operating and renewal costs
  • Contract key-performance indicators establish baselines, thresholds, remedies and reporting intervals
  • Change-control procedures manage design amendments, cost variation and approval authority

Participants can identify and manage environmental and social risks in infrastructure development.

  • Environmental and social impact assessment scopes receptors, impacts, alternatives and mitigation
  • IFC Performance Standards inform labour, resettlement, biodiversity and community-risk controls
  • Stakeholder mapping identifies affected groups, decision influence and engagement needs
  • Grievance mechanisms set accessible channels, response times and escalation procedures
  • Land-acquisition screening identifies tenure, livelihood and displacement risks early
  • Biodiversity mitigation hierarchy applies avoidance, minimisation, restoration and offset principles

Participants can establish governance arrangements that support cross-agency infrastructure delivery.

  • RACI matrices assign decisions, approvals, delivery tasks and information responsibilities
  • Stakeholder engagement plans define audiences, messages, channels and decision points
  • Interagency coordination protocols resolve utility, planning, transport and finance dependencies
  • Community-benefit agreements document local employment, affordability and amenity commitments
  • Political-economy analysis identifies incentives, veto points and institutional constraints
  • Decision logs preserve evidence, approvals, assumptions and unresolved issues

Participants can convert priority projects into a controlled implementation programme.

  • Work-breakdown structures define deliverables, activities, owners and acceptance criteria
  • Critical-path schedules identify sequencing, dependencies, float and milestone risks
  • Stage-gate governance controls feasibility, design, procurement, construction and commissioning decisions
  • Risk registers record likelihood, impact, owners, mitigations and contingency actions
  • Readiness assessments test land, permits, funding, design and institutional capacity
  • Benefits-realisation plans assign outcome indicators, data sources and reporting owners

Participants can design performance systems for tracking infrastructure service, emissions and financial results.

  • Key-performance indicator trees connect strategic objectives with operational measures
  • Monitoring plans specify meters, surveys, frequencies, custodians and quality checks
  • GHG inventory updates distinguish avoided emissions from direct operational reductions
  • Baseline adjustment rules address weather, occupancy, production and service changes
  • Dashboard design presents cost, carbon, reliability, equity and resilience indicators
  • Independent verification protocols establish audit trails, sampling and evidence requirements

Participants can define data requirements that improve infrastructure planning and asset performance.

  • Asset registers connect location, condition, ownership, energy use and renewal needs
  • Smart-meter data analysis identifies load profiles, anomalies and demand-response opportunities
  • Geographic information systems combine infrastructure, hazards, demographics and land-use layers
  • Data-governance protocols define ownership, access, retention and privacy responsibilities
  • Digital-twin use cases test operational scenarios before physical asset changes
  • Cybersecurity controls protect connected meters, charging systems and building automation

Participants can build, review and present a complete sustainable urban infrastructure investment and implementation plan.

  • Problem statement defines service gaps, emissions sources, hazards and affected communities
  • Baseline evidence consolidates energy, emissions, asset, demand and financial data
  • Prioritised portfolio ranks projects through carbon, cost, resilience and equity criteria
  • Business-case summary states capital needs, revenues, funding sources and sensitivities
  • Delivery roadmap assigns governance, procurement, milestones, risks and decision gates
  • Performance dashboard presents measurable service, financial, emissions and resilience outcomes

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Urban energy and emissions baseline template
  2. Renewable and resilience project screening matrix
  3. Marginal abatement cost and multi-criteria portfolio model
  4. Sustainable infrastructure project business-case template
  5. Implementation roadmap and risk-register pack
  6. Performance dashboard and monitoring plan

Who should attend

  • Urban Planning Manager — needs to translate city strategies into coordinated infrastructure programmes
  • Municipal Energy Officer — needs credible renewable, efficiency and demand-management project pipelines
  • Infrastructure Project Manager — needs to scope, procure and monitor lower-carbon capital projects
  • Utility Planning Engineer — needs to assess distributed energy, storage and grid-demand interactions
  • Real Estate Development Manager — needs to integrate efficient buildings, mobility and district systems
  • Climate Finance Specialist — needs investable project cases and measurable climate outcomes

Skills and tools covered

Urban energy planningRenewable project appraisalInfrastructure business casesClimate resilience screeningLow-carbon procurementPerformance measurement

Tools and standards

GHG Protocol, ISO 50001, ISO 14090, International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce planning methods, standards and technical decision criteria. Participants analyse city, utility, property and transport cases; compare project options in small groups; and test choices through financing, procurement and delivery simulations. Structured worksheets are used to build an emissions baseline, intervention portfolio, project business case and implementation roadmap. Trainers provide technical feedback throughout, while application planning helps participants adapt the methods to their own jurisdiction, asset portfolio or development programme.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have professional experience in infrastructure, energy, urban planning, real estate, public policy, engineering, finance or sustainability. They should be comfortable reading simple project budgets, energy-consumption data and technical reports. Familiarity with local planning approvals, utility services or public procurement is useful but not essential. The course does not require engineering design credentials, advanced financial modelling, coding, GIS expertise or prior certification in climate reporting. Participants should bring a current or proposed city, district, facility portfolio or infrastructure project to use as an application case.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants need professional familiarity with infrastructure, energy, planning, property, finance or sustainability work. Advanced engineering design, financial modelling and GIS skills are not required; the course explains the calculations and decision tools used.

Bring available information on a city, district, facility portfolio or project, such as energy bills, asset lists, planning documents, budgets or climate targets. Confidential information is not required, and participants may use a realistic anonymised case.

It is designed for managers and specialists who plan, fund, deliver or oversee urban infrastructure. Municipal staff, utility teams, developers, project managers, climate officers and infrastructure financiers will find direct application.

A renewable energy project course usually concentrates on generation technologies and individual project development. This course positions renewables within urban systems, covering buildings, mobility, water, waste, resilience, governance, financing and portfolio delivery.

Participants leave with a structured investment and implementation package that can be adapted for internal planning, budget submissions, donor discussions or project preparation. The templates support further work with technical advisers, utilities, financiers and procurement teams.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours. The first week builds baseline, technology and portfolio methods; the second week develops financing, delivery, monitoring and the final presented plan.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.