Volume 59

Addressing Resource-Driven Energy Optimization Challenges in Water-Scarce Urban Agglomerations through Game-Theoretic and Multi-Objective Approaches Nan Li, Xuanxuan Wang, Yunzhong Jiang, Yongnan Zhu

Abstract

Ensuring access to affordable energy and water resources is essential for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Urban energy and water systems exhibit strong interconnectivity and interdependence. We adopt a bottom-up, two-tier, multi-stage multi-agent game combined with multi-objective optimization to quantify intra-city energy–water interaction dynamics and determine optimal resource-dominance allocations across the urban cluster. Our results show significant spatial disparities among cities such as Ordos and Yulin, which exhibit energy carbon footprints of approximately 2.46 t COâ‚‚ / tce and water footprints of about 1.52 billion m³ — exceeding the regional averages by 39.3% and 21.7%, respectively. Under a shifting resource dominance paradigm, as exemplified by Ordos, the energy-dominant Stackelberg scenario achieves economic benefits 28.5% and 19.7% higher than those of water-dominant and cooperative scenarios. The formation of a coal–coal power to coal-to-chemicals industrial chain that strategic resource coupling can enhance systemic resilience. We also provide recommendations for promoting sustainable urban transitions in resource-constrained regions by strengthening system-level coordination between energy and water subsystems.

Keywords urban energy–water nexus, urban resilience, life cycle assessment, stackelberg game model, multi-objective optimization