Six European cities join forces for sustainable energy deployment
With the beginning of November a large-scale initiative was launched in order to design and deploy innovations in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Umeå (Sweden), Glasgow (Scotland), Brno (Czech Republic), Parma (Italy), and Gdansk (Poland). With the financial support of the European Commission those six cities will demonstrate how to combine ICT, e-mobility, and energy solutions to reduce CO2 emission and consequently push towards zero net energy districts.
The “Ruggedised” project (Rotterdam, Umeå and Glasgow: Generating Exemplar Districts In Sustainable Energy Deployment) aims to implement 32 smart solutions which (apart from their direct impact on energy-efficiency and environment) shall improve life quality of the citizens and contribute to the development of local businesses exploiting opportunities of “green digital economy” through, for example, open data platforms or IoT. The European Commission provides funding for the project under the framework of Horizon 2020 program and expects wide uptake of good practices, business models, knowledge, and perhaps also the technologies made in EU.
The EC contribution of almost EUR 18 million will be distributed among 34 consortium partners who will closely cooperate with local governments to proceed with ambitious plans like the Rotterdam’s Hart van Zuid which itself — beyond the scope of “Ruggedised” — will consume more than EUR 300 million within next 20 years. Rotterdam’s vision covers integration of smart energy management systems that will enable energy sharing between Ahoy convention center, art building, underground and bus station, and even swimming pool. This will be complemented with deployment of sustainable energy sources like photovoltaic panels, urban wind turbines, heat-cold storage and energy recovery installations.
Similar “solution packages” will be implemented in the other two “lighthouse cities” — Umeå and Glasgow. The agenda includes geothermal heating, intelligent building management systems, e-charging hubs, grid-integration of renewable energy sources, intelligent street lighting, and decision support platform based on open data standards — just to mention some of the proposed innovations.
The lighthouses are supposed to guide other local governments in Europe in their “zero emission district” endeavors. So during this five-year project Brno, Parma, and Gdansk will draw from lessons learned from lighthouses and extend their development roadmaps with (additional) sustainable energy deployment projects. In case of Poland the city of Gdansk, accompanied by Gdansk Water Utilities and independent research and technology centre PICTEC, will continue to materialize its smart city strategy.
Some of Gdansk’s innovations will technologically reinforce the recently RegioStars-awarded historical Lower Town district. In order to facilitate the process PICTEC (a research and technology center based in Gdansk), in close cooperation with the TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), Austrian Institute of Technology, and the Institute of Studies for the Integration of Systems (Italy), will carry out research and consulting tasks, including a foresight study, to support replication and adaptation of lighthouse concepts to the local context.
