We’ve all scoured our homes for a misplaced manual when an appliance goes on the fritz. Now, imagine the appliance is a 200-year-old generator that single-handedly powers a subterranean city. Did I mention this is where all of humanity is hiding out until the dust clears on a post-apocalyptic surface world? Talk about an epic oops!

City of Ember is a family-friendly parable that joins the Emberites in just such a bind. The bunker town was meant to sustain the survivors’ descendants for two centuries. The builders assumed the one thing their offspring would remember is where they left that darn box with instructions for returning to the surface. Instead of clicking open in the hands of the mayor, as planned, the misplaced box pops its top in a cluttered closet in the home of the film’s spirited teen heroine, Lina Mayfleet. Her toddler sister gets to it first, tearing it to shreds and even eating a chunk. Lina and buddy Doon Harrow team up to piece together the manual and find the route out of the city.

In the meantime, the urban underground is showing its age. Its failing generator is spawning blackouts. The overhead constellation of lightbulbs goes dark longer and longer each time. Huge piles of garbage are accumulating around the edges of the city. Repair materials are scarce, and officials are hoarding food.

Ember’s plight is fanciful, but figuring out how to keep cities powered-up is more than a fairy tale. For some guidance on what Ember’s architects got right, and where they might have been a bit brighter, I turned to a chapter in the Worldwatch Institute’s 2007 State of the World Report that looks at how best to energize our cities.

On the plus side, Ember’s generator uses local power with a renewable energy source (an underground river). So Ember isn’t struggling with fuel shortages or strained transmission lines from faraway sources (Worldwatch points out that some 7 percent of electricity is shed as it is carried to cities on far reaching grids). The cavernous site also makes good use of the insulating properties of the earth, without even relying on heat pumps that are helping some aboveground cities keep temperatures under control. And Ember has the ultimate green roof.

On the other hand, they might have squeezed a few more generations out of that generator. Landfill gas from all that garbage could be feeding the grid, as it does in cities like São Paulo, Riga, and Istanbul. Another tip: Switch lightbulbs. Emberites could have used compact florescent bulbs, or light-emitting-diodes (LEDs), instead of the traditional filament bulbs that dangle above the subterranean rooftops.

- Brad Scriber

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