In addition, as we re-design communities to be pedestrian-friendly we can create heating and cooling districts (heating & cooling are 50% of the load) that are substantially more cost-effective and efficient to operate than stand-alone HVAC systems.

That is SOP in Sweden and it do anyway only add up to a few percent of the electricity production. In 2004 47.8 TWh of heat and 6.1 TWh of electricity were produced out of a total of 148.8 TWh electricity produced.

I think the district heating could about double and all of the electricity production potential is not used, 6.1 TWh could probably become 24 TWh in a very optimistic scenario.

We alost got biomass comming out of our ears, lots of hydro power but still need nuclear power. At least while we still have a lot of heavy industry making paper, steel, etc for quite a lot of people.

impact of heating & cooling districts

Energy markets are not homogeneous. In the US many older markets use NG for heating so the electric impact of districts is much smaller (though increased cooling demands are driving electric demands).

In the cooling-dominated climes of the sunbelt (e.g. Florida) heating and cooling is met predominately by electricity. And cooling represents 60-70% of peak demand.