The Green Digital Charter (GDC) awards ceremony for smart city projects will take place during the conference ‘Cities in Transition – The role of digital in shaping our future cities, jointly organised by EUROCITIES Knowledge Society Forum (KSF) and the GDC initiative on 25 January 2017 in Brussels (more information here)

For this year, three award categories have been defined:

• ’Citizen participation & impact on society‘ This award will be given to the project that has actively involved citizens and/or other civil society stakeholders; has a strong bottom-up approach and/or has developed tools to be used in a bottom-up approach; and is expected to tackle, or has already tackled, societal challenges in the city.
• ’Creation of European added value‘ The winning project will be in line with relevant EU policies and/or targets; has involved in its implementation a number of cities across Europe; and has been replicated (or has the potential to be replicated) in a number of European cities, preferably in different countries.
• ’Promoting open & interoperable solutions‘ This award will recognise the project that has adopted and implemented open data and/or interfaces; has deployed and/or promoted interoperable solutions; and has tried to promote ‘urban platforms’ or the better use/re-use of infrastructure, services, tools, etc.

Twenty-one projects from 14 cities are competing in one or several categories. Three projects will be shortlisted and one awarded per category during the conference.

The members of the jury are Miimu Airaksinen (VTT, Finland); Peter Bosch (TNO, Netherlands); Jan Dictus (GOJA Consulting, Austria); and Cristobal Irazoqui (European Commission, DG CNECT).

All projects will be promoted through our ’GDC Collection of Case Studies 2016‘ publication, which will include 32 case studies from 17 European cities.

The year 2017 will be crucial for the completion of the Digital Single Market, and cities will play an important role in this process. The forthcoming implementation of the EU’s new digital laws and the launch of the Urban Agenda partnership on digital transition will have a major direct impact at local level.

On the occasion of the winter meeting of its knowledge society forum (KSF), EUROCITIES wishes to engage in a dialogue with officials and representatives of the EU institutions and other stakeholders to make the most of the planned digital policies and initiatives.

EUROCITIES KSF and Green Digital Charter (GDC www.greendigitalcharter.eu) initiative will therefore jointly organise a conference on ‘Cities in Transition – The role of digital in shaping our future cities‘, to be held on 25 January 2017 in Brussels.

During the opening plenary session, members of the European Parliament, as well as representatives of the European Commission and of cities will hold a debate on what the new Urban Agenda partnership on digital transition should achieve, taking into account the EU’s future digital policies and activities. While assessing the real needs and priorities of cities, participants will also exchange views on current and future implementation challenges and obstacles. The political debate will be followed by two parallel series of technical workshops dedicated to specific issues. Concrete cases, project examples, and initiatives will be cited to illustrate how cities can benefit from the use of digital solutions. The EUROCITIES GDC is one such initiative. It commits 51 European cities, representing almost 27 million citizens, to working together and delivering on the objectives of improving the quality of life in cities using digital solutions. Participants will also develop recommendations to help local authorities and EU institutions jointly achieve their policy and project objectives. The event will conclude with the GDC Awards ceremony for smart city projects. The winners in each of the following categories will be announced: Citizen participation & impact on society; Creation of European added value; Promoting open & interoperable solutions (more information here).

The draft agenda of the conference is available here: Cities in transition_draft agenda_15122016

Registration is open until 16 January 2017 at: bit.ly/CitiesInTransition-Registration

This article was originally published on ICTFOOTPRINT.EU website

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu sustains the use of standard methodologies and transparent procedures to calculate CO2 footprint.

In fact, ICTFOOTPRINT will hold a free webinar about ICT Standards for Data Centres and ICT Sustainability on 20^th December 2016, 15:00 CET, open to all those with an interest in becoming more sustainable in their ICT.

During the 1-hour webinar, Lance Rϋtimann (Vice President of The Green Grid) will share his views and tips, on how the European EN 50600 Series of Standards came about as a motivation to deliver a comprehensive EN standard for Data centres to help rise to the challenge of various situations such as one room to multiple building facilities and diverse business models with individual complexities.

Moreover,  Joe Baguley (Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, EMEA at VMware) will provide us with stimulating insights on some major recommendations that VMWare works on whilst minimising its ICT corporate footprint, described in VMware’s Global Impact Report 2015 – Force for Good.

Plus, Jean Manuel Canet (Vice-Chairman Working Party “ICT and climate change” at International Telecommunication Union) will explain some ITU-T methodologies for a sustainable ICT.

Why you should watch the webinar?

· Free webinar, with no costs for you and requiring less than 1 hour of your time.

· Learn how to start improving the energy efficiency in your ICT business

· Know success stories about implementing energy efficiency

· Start benefiting from competitive advantages, as energy cost reduction, with energy efficiency

The webinar is for any European ICT player that needs to improve its energy efficiency in ICT.

Register here

The European Commission’s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) is organising an “Energy Efficiency Finance Market Place” in Brussels on 18-19 January 2017.

The event will bring together key stakeholders from cities, regions and industry as well as the financial sector to discuss successful schemes implemented at local and regional level, financing mechanisms and products available, and practical challenges to implement them on a large scale. A special focus will be on structuring the market and, in particular, standardisation, aggregation and de-risking of energy efficiency assets.

The conference is the third in a series of successful events during the last years and will feature:

• Plenary sessions by high-level political representatives on finance for sustainable energy;
• Panel sessions by financial institutions on practical experiences and project bankability; and
• Parallel sessions on practical solutions and projects implemented across Europe in four thematic tracks:
  • Standardisation and benchmarking;
  • Innovative financing solutions;
  • Aggregating projects on public assets;
  • Aggregating projects on private assets;
• Poster sessions of sustainable energy projects with divers technical and financial structures; as well as
• Stands of financial institutions.

Please save the dates in your diary; a full programme and practical details will be circulated in the coming weeks.

The event will offer the opportunity for a limited number of financial institutions to participate with a dedicated stand. With a view to ensuring coverage of diverse types of financial institutions, organisations with experience in sustainable energy financing, including energy efficiency, in a number of European countries/regions are encouraged to express their interest here until 07/12/2016.

In case of any questions, please contact EASME-Energy@ec.europa.eu.

Provision of data and results to the Smart Cities Information System*

29 November, Thursday, 13.30h – 14.30h

This webinar will illustrate to projects how they can easily upload information and results through the means of SCIS’ new online self-reporting tool. With the input of data and through analysis of the results and insights, the SCIS database represents a goldmine of valuable project experience, leading to the replication of smart cities best practice and contributing to policy development in the EU. The webinar will offer a brief introduction to the Smart Cities Information System and guided tour through the online self-reporting tool. It will be followed by a Q&A session.

*For projects coordinators and project experts for technical and economic assessment

Register here.

Representatives of 600 cities from five continents, 576 exhibitors and 412 global influencers, innovators, and thought leaders, along with more than 16,000 visitors converged on Barcelona on 15-17 November to attend the sixth edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress. Entitled ‘Cities for citizens’, this was the biggest ever gathering of municipal authorities in the event’s history.

Six European Horizon 2020 ‘lighthouse’ projects – GrowSmarter, REMOURBAN, Triangulum, REPLICATE, Sharing cities, and SmartEnCity – and supporting actions CITYkeys and ESPRESSO shared a pavilion at the expo along with the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) and the Green Digital Charter (GDC) initiative.

Sharing Cities is a Horizon 2020 smart city ‘lighthouse’ programme. EUROCITIES leads on the replication and communication activities and they acted as coordinators of this event.

Visitors received first-hand information from the coordinators and partners of these collaborative projects. The latter shared their achievements and demonstrated live their latest results.

The speaking sessions hosted by the project partners – city representatives, business partners, NGOs – proved to be particularly popular.

They covered most of the hot topics within the smart cities context, including: smart city development; performance measurement; sustainable urban mobility; citizen engagement; business models; and finance and procurement.  The speakers represented Cologne and Stockholm (GrowSmarter), Milan and Greenwich (Sharing Cities), Vienna (Smarter Together), Rotterdam (CITYkeys and ESPRESSO), Ghent, Valencia and Turin (GDC), San Sebastian (Replicate), and Sabadell (Triangulum), among others (see the agenda here).

The GDC team hosted a cocktail reception in the evening of the 16^th, which was a huge hit with participants. Nikolaos Kontinakis, Green Digital Charter coordinator, introduced the short addresses by Paola Pisano, deputy mayor of Turin in charge of innovation and smart city; Mathias Reddmann, European Commission, DG CONNECT; and Bart Rosseau, chief data officer, City of Ghent.

GDC is a EUROCITIES initiative that commits cities to working together to promote the use of digital technologies and address the challenges of growth, sustainability and resilience for the benefit of their citizens.

EUROCITIES is also involved in the CITYkeys support action, which has developed key performance indicators for the measurement and transparent monitoring of smart cities and smart city projects.

For more information please visit, respectively:

• www.eurocities.eu
• www.greendigitalcharter.eu
• citykeys-project.eu
• www.sharingcities.eu
• eu-smartcities.eu

This article was originally published on the ICTFOOTPRINT.eu project’s website

Energy bills and carbon emissions in Europe are increasing due to the high use of ICT equipment and services. But, with a wise energy and environmental efficiency strategy, savings up to 15% of global emissions can be made by 2020! It’s crucial for Europe become sustainable in their ICT.

ICTFOOPRINT.eu raises awareness about sustainable ICT and helping ICT sector make the most of the benefits which wise energy management brings like higher energy efficiency and less energy costs

On 20th October, ICT players attended the 2nd ICTFOOTPRINT.eu webinar, getting to know several ICT tools and services for energy management, which help them decreasing the energy consumption of ICT equipment. This allows lower costs in energy bills and even higher levels of ICT performance efficiency.

Jaak Vlasveld (Director of GreenIT Amsterdam) and Rabih Bashroush (Coordinator of Eureca project), are both energy experts with a wide experience on energy efficiency in ICT. They gave valuable pragmatic information about energy efficiency in ICT with high potential to benefit ICT players, without compromising the performance of their ICT equipment, especially in data centres.

Sources of Energy Loss

It is common that only 1% of the energy is used by the CPU’s equipment, compared to the amount of energy that has to be generated so the equipment can work.

And many times servers are using only 10% or 15% of their full capacity, meaning that energy waste is unacceptably high. Many are the reasons why ICT equipment are inefficient but there are many ways to fight against this “energy loss chain”!

Sustainable ICT is crucial for world’s sustainability!

How to procure and manage sustainable ICT?

Jaak Vlasveld explained how to achieve energy efficiency gains without impacting performance and stability of ICT, thanks to sustainable ICT approaches.

• Energy Efficiency from hardware & software: If you monitor energy consumption, it is possible to decide where optimisation must be applied. SEFLab, from Greening the Cloud Project, created sensor technologies which can measure the individual energy used by software running on each individual server component, decreasing the overall energy consumption.
• Doing experiments on energy consumption: Doing different experiments and analysing energy consumption is a way to identify where energy savings can be achieved. One example showcased allowed savings of 25% thanks to this approach, while another allowed savings of 46%.

• High energy savings from processor’s optimization: Applying Demand Based Switching technology, where a processor automatically reduces its clock speed during limited utilisation, allows electricity savings around 20%, without affecting the equipment’s performance.
• Equipment’s Consolidation is an option as well: Energy gains can come from consolidation of existing servers without buying more modern servers with better power performance. Servers’ consolidation, together with the virtualisation of the hardware where applications are hosted can allow savings of up to 50%.

High Energy Savings potential from Public Procurement

Public sector has a big potential for energy savings in his hands!

• £90 million was the annual UK Universities ICT electricity bill in 2012, where 60% was due to servers.
• European Public sector spends 19% of its GDP on Energy bills (€2.200 Billions).
• Data centres are responsible for 3% of global electricity supply and for 2% of total greenhouse gas emissions (the same carbon footprint as the airline industry).

According to Rabih Bashroush, there are many challenges for the Public sector to improve their energy efficiency, one of them being the lack of technical expertise.

The Eureca project supports the public sector by:

• Helping them identify energy savings opportunities.
• Providing  an easy-to-use online tool, focused on data centres, to guide, train and support with a customised report, highlighting energy savings opportunities and relevant areas of the EU Code of Conduct that can be applied.
• Organising training and networking sessions on data centres energy efficiency targeting data centre managers, procurers, and policy makers.

Eight European smart city projects have teamed up with the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) and the Green Digital Charter (GDC) initiative to showcase their achievements in building a strong community of smart cities in Europe.

They will have a joint stand at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona from 15 to 17 November.

Representatives and partners of Horizon 2020 ‘lighthouse’ projects GrowSmarter, REMOURBAN, Triangulum, REPLICATE, Sharing cities, and SmartEnCity, as well as supporting actions CITYkeys, ESPRESSO and GDC will be on hand to inform visitors, answer questions, and present their work in speaking sessions.

GrowSmarter, REMOURBAN and Triangulum are in their second year of implementation, while REPLICATE, Sharing Cities, and SmartEnCity were launched in 2016. The consortia of these projects implement their plans in demonstration areas with the active involvement of ‘follower’ cities. Forty-four cities participate in this work. By engaging citizens and exploiting synergies, the partners work together to improve urban services and infrastructure.

The EIP-SCC is a key EU initiative aimed at creating an open, collaborative marketplace for smart city solutions. It brings together around 5,000 partners – cities, industry, SMEs, banks, research organisations, and other actors – from all over Europe.

Supporting actions will also be represented at our stand: CITYkeys, which has developed key performance indicators for the measurement and transparent monitoring of smart cities and smart city projects; ESPRESSO, which develops a conceptual smart city information framework based on open standards; and the Green Digital Charter, a EUROCITIES initiative that commits cities to work together to deliver on the EU’s objectives of promoting the use of digital technologies and address the challenges of growth, sustainability and resilience.

The GDC team will host a cocktail reception in the evening on 16 November.

For further information on the Smart City Expo World Congress, click here to visit the official webpage of the event.

We invited experts in the field of smart lighting to our 10 October 2016 webinar.

A recording of the webinar is available on YouTube channel at http://bit.ly/2rqmz7A.

Following a brief summary of the Green Digital Charter (GDC) training activities and agenda, Ingjerd Bratterud, head of project section, parks and street department, city of Stavanger, walked us through the story of how her city came to use LED lighting in public spaces.

The energy company Lyse owns, develops, and operates the public lighting systems in Stavanger and its neighbouring municipalities. It started testing LED lamps in 2008. Currently around 1,300 lighting fixtures are equipped with LED lamps. Between 2016 and 2019, about 6,600 mercury vapour lamps will be replaced with LED lights in Stavanger.

Bratterud gave some hints and tips about what is important to consider when investing in LED fixtures, and she also summed up the functional requirements of such systems. Switching to LED lamps can reduce energy consumption and costs, lower the environmental impact, and enhance the quality of life of citizens. Stavanger is well on its way to becoming a smart city. Bratterud’s presentation was followed by a lively discussion.

Arthur Noordhoek, adviser and project leader lighting, city of Eindhoven, has played an active role in his city’s transition to smart lighting. Eindhoven’s prime aim with the LEDification of its lighting fixtures is to save energy and promote sustainability. The city understands that public lighting contributes to road safety and adds value to society.

In Eindhoven, the installation of LED lamps has resulted in 25% extra energy savings. In 2012, the city developed its 2030 Vision and Roadmap on Urban Lighting. Eindhoven is determined to employ innovative technologies and involve the citizens in addressing socially relevant issues. According to Noordhoek, there is no victory without the end users’ involvement. “Our citizens are the only ones who can judge if the solutions fit or not”, he said.

Neil Platt, special projects manager, street lighting, at Balfour Beatty (contracting partner of Coventry City) presented his city’s private finance initiative (PFI). Coventry completed its core investment programme within five years of its launch. Between year six and year 25, they will be in “maintenance mode”. In Coventry, nearly 100% of the columns, lanterns, and subway and city centre lighting fixtures have been replaced and solar bollards have been installed.

Platt explained the city’s investment methodology and demonstrated that smart lighting can indeed maximise energy savings. Real savings come from full redesign and value engineering, he said. The table below provides further technical details.

The city of Tampere and eight other municipalities in its region participate in the Green Digital Charter (GDC), a EUROCITIES initiative promoting progress in tackling climate change through the innovative use of digital technologies in cities. The Tampere Central Region is committed to carrying out five pilot projects based on information and communications technology (ICT) and aligned with the Charter’s themes over the next five years. The aim of these and other actions is to reduce the direct carbon footprint of the ICT sector by 30% over the next ten years.

Mayor Anna-Kaisa Ikonen signed the GDC on 18 October on the sidelines of EUROCITIES’ mobility and knowledge society forums meeting at Tampere Hall. The signing was also attended by Mary-Ann Schreurs, Deputy Mayor of Eindhoven and chair of the EUROCITIES knowledge society forum. The city of Tampere agreed to the terms and principles of the Charter on 26 September. The Tampere region municipalities included in the data administration co-operation have also subscribed to the Green Digital Charter.

“Our objective is that in 2025 the people of Tampere would mainly use digital services. Once the services are user-friendly and work smoothly, they make our lives easier and cut unnecessary red tape, use of time, energy consumption and traffic,” said Mayor Anna-Kaisa Ikonen at the signing event.

One example she cited was Tampere’s intention to replace existing street lighting with LED lights. This project is expected to reduce the city’s electricity consumption by up to 30% by 2020, and by an estimated 60% in the longer run.

Tampere aims to include sustainable development in all its practices to deliver benefits to the local community and the business sector. The city also encourages actions to prevent social exclusion.  To this end, it intends to create an environment for open innovation; enhance citizens’ participation through the use of digital technologies; and strengthen cooperation with the European Network of Living Labs.

Tampere is one of Finland’s six cities that are members of the EUROCITIES network. In 2009, Tampere signed and committed to the goals of the EUROCITIES declaration on climate change. This document and the GDC intend to promote sustainable development, energy efficiency and the reduction of carbon emissions with ICT solutions.

The underlying purpose of EUROCITIES is to improve the quality of life of the residents of its member cities by facilitating cooperation and networking, encouraging knowledge sharing, and jointly influencing the EU’s relevant policies and practices.

20th October – 12h00 CEST

JOIN NOW: IT’S FREE & OPEN TO EVERYONE!

https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/13847/227521

Why should you join it?

• Free webinar, requiring less than 1 hour of your time.
• You will learn from the experts how to start improving the energy efficiency of your business.
• You will receive a focused overview on ICT sustainability & you will clearly understand what your business should do about it.
• You will hear European Success Stories about implementing energy efficiency.

Who will be speaking? 

Jaak Vlasveld, Director of GreenIT Amsterdam

With a background in innovative technology evaluation & design processes and his more than ten years of experience in smart computing and ICT infrastructure, he is one of the main proponents of sustainability in ICT.

Rabih Bashroush, Coordinator of Eureca project

As the director of the Enterprise Computing Research Group & with his wide experience as professor in major English Universities, Rabih’s experience is highly focused on ICT & computing engineering.

The eafip Workshop for public procurers in the Energy sector (ministries, regional and local authorities, agencies, public utility entities, etc.) will be held in the Europahuset in Stockholm, Sweden on the 23^rd November 2016.

The aim of the event will be to highlight the benefits of innovation procurement of ICT solutions through the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) and Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) approaches across Europe, with a particular focus on the framework of exploration, extraction, production, transport and distribution of energy.

The workshop will feature:

• Presentation / networking discussion on the EU funding opportunities for PCP and PPI (in the framework of the Horizon 2020 calls).
• Presentation of case examples and lessons learned.
• Presentation / networking discussion on the eafip Toolkit (aimed to support you in preparing your innovation procurement).

The workshop is open to public contracting authorities who have a unique chance to openly discuss unmet procurement needs, innovation concepts, project ideas, and much more. All procurers have an opportunity to briefly present their ideas / plan / projects in the parallel sessions.

Please note that this event will be held in English.

Provisional agenda

Event’s website: http://eafip.eu/events/workshops/energy_workshop/

During our 19 September webinar, dedicated to smart city standards, Christophe Colinet, chair of the EUROCITIES standards and interoperability working group and smart city project manager at Bordeaux Metropole, presented the conclusions of the 29 April WG meeting in Rennes and reiterated the working group’s objectives. He highlighted the main points of the European Commission’s communication entitled ‘ICT standardisation priorities for the digital single market‘, and identified ways to align the WG’s objectives to the Commission’s priorities.

Together with Nikolaos Kontinakis, project coordinator at EUROCITIES, they explained the CITYkeys standardisation process and emphasised the role of key performance indicators (KPIs) in making cities interoperable and transparent. The CITYkeys project’s KPIs are set to be endorsed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

• See their PowerPoint presentation here

Dr. Omar Elloumi, chair of OneM2M technical plenary, Nokia Bell-Labs and CTO group, presented his organisation, OneM2M, and explained its vision, structure, and role in smart city development. Open standards, open sources, and interoperability can effectively support the building of a smart city.

• See his PowerPoint presentation here
• Watch the webinar

Our next webinars will focus on smart lighting (10 October) and green ICT (7 November).

• More information and registration here

Signatory cities are invited to recommend topics and speakers for our future webinars.

The brokerage event will provide an opportunity for municipal representatives to develop consortia and present project ideas in response to the Horizon 2020 Smart Cities and Communities 2017 call for proposals for lighthouse projects, and to learn from the results of the previous round of Smart Cities and Communities call.

Representatives of the European Commission (DG ENER, DG MOVE and DG CONNECT) will present the 2017 Horizon 2020 call for proposals under the European Innovation Partnership for Smart cities and Communities, and will sum up the lessons learned from the previous round of applications.

Representatives of the ongoing smart cities projects and supporting actions will also be on hand to discuss their work and the factors that contribute to their success.

During the event, you are invited to present your project idea, which could contribute to proactive matchmaking between potential projects. Please note that the number of presentations is limited, and slots will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Registration: register

Agenda: download

Event’s website: Covenant of Mayors

Organiser: Covenant of Mayors Office & EUROCITIES

Contact and registration: Anja De Cunto anja.decunto@eurocities.eu

This article was originally published on www.scottishcities.org

The Scottish Cities Alliance is leading a consortium of Smart Cities to the European Week of Regions and Cities Conference in Brussels.

The Smart Cities – Smart Ambitions workshop “Inter-city approaches to funding and delivering Smart Ambitions” aims to build relationships in a bid to achieve collective smart ambitions.

The partnership involves more than 20 cities from countries including Denmark, Basque Country in Spain, Finland, Poland and Scotland and is supported by the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative.

The aim of the event will focus on simplifying the European Structural Investment Funds and provide the opportunity for cities within a member state to deliver their collective Smart Cities’ ambitions.

The workshop will be held at Scotland House in Brussels on 11th October 2016 as part of the European Week of Regions and Cities. It will look to build upon the collective experience of city partnerships across a number of member states to adopt an inter-city approach to the Smart Cities agenda.

Registration for the Smart Cities, Smart Ambitions event opens on the 8th July – visit the EWRC website for further details. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/regions-and-cities/2016/register.cfm

This article was originally published on ictfootprint.eu

Why energy efficiency ICT solutions are important

Around 55% of ICT companies find it hard to make resource efficiency a part of their core business. The most common barriers are the lack of awareness, tangible benefits, and knowledge to identify the right solutions for the business. Energy efficiency and low carbon footprint provides competitive advantages, as wise energy consumption can help the ICT sector save €600 billion by 2020.

The mission of ICTFOOTPRINT.eu is to provide services that guide firms in discovering sustainable solutions and start becoming carbon and energy efficient – and more competitive!

Why are life cycle assessment (LCA) based methodologies important?

Why do we need to continue to work on these approaches?

This paper looks at the various methodologies on offer or in development and then compares their capabilities and objectives with the expectations of the various stakeholders: government, industry and academia. It concludes that LCA is an important tool in helping us understand the carbon impact of ICT, but it is not a cure-all. Just like any other tool, LCA should be used for the purpose for which it is designed: for identifying the most carbon intensive points in the lifecycle and directing reduction efforts accordingly. LCA is also appropriate for comparing the carbon impact of different supply chains (sourcing copper in Australia as opposed to Brazil) or comparing different technologies (reading a newspaper compared to an e-reader).

The European Commission has decided to single out the most used and successful IT solutions and services in the public sector through the new EC Sharing and Reuse Awards to promote the visibility of such solutions and to encourage their reuse.

In public administrations across Europe, countless IT solutions and services are in place that could often easily be reused by other public administrations. Reuse of successful existing software would stop continuous reinvention of the wheel and could help to save time and costs for users and administrations alike and increase interoperability between systems.

Competition conditions

Winners will receive EUR 15 000 and EUR 10 000 in prize money respectively for IT solutions and services that meet the criteria in one of the four categories:

• cross-border administrations
• national administrations
• regional administrations
• local administrations

Contenders that would like to participate in the competition for the ‘Sharing & Reuse Award’ can register their project. The competition is open until 28 October 2016 and the prizes will be announced in March 2017.

The ISA² programme of the European Commission promotes the modernisation of public administrations through more than 20 solutions that foster interoperability, sharing and reuse.

Who can participate?

Only solutions developed by or for public administrations will qualify for the Sharing & Reuse Awards. If the solution has been developed by a private entity on behalf of a public administration, the reward will go to the public administration concerned.

The jury of the competition will include staff members working for the European Council, the European Commission and for the European Parliament.

For further information

Read more about the competition

Axel Baschnagel
June 24, 2016

The EU-funded SSL-erate (solid state lighting) project is intended to accelerate the use of LED lighting in Europe. Among the project partners are EUROCITIES members Stavanger and Malmo, and the universities of Munich and Flanders.

The three pillars of the project are: human-centric lighting; open innovation; and sustainable development.

• Human-centric lighting: Light is the most powerful regulator of people’s day-night rhythm. It has a number of ‘non-visual’ effects, including the power to energise, relax, and increase alertness, cognitive performance and mood. A human-centric lighting solution for any given non-visual effect therefore requires a tailor-made approach, based on a solid understanding of the specific context and environmental conditions. Find out more about human-centric lighting by clicking here
• Open Innovation: This approach involves promoting collaboration between companies across the value chain, customers – such as municipalities, schools or hospitals – and knowledge institutes. The goal is to work together on creating useful new solutions: products, services, strategic collaborations or business models. You can find background material and case studies on open innovation here
• Sustainable development in smart cities: The energy saving potential of solid state lighting (SSL) is well known. The work within the SSL-erate project stresses that SSL is even more important in terms of the social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. You can find out more in various case studies and recommendations for green business opportunities here

Visit the lightingforpeople (lightingforpeople.eu) platform for the latest information on the results of the project.

On behalf of the EIP SCC Business Models, Finance & Procurement Action Cluster:

“We are happy to invite you to join our webinar on the CITYnvest project: ‘Increasing Capacities in Cities for Innovating Financing in Energy Efficiency’ that will take place on July 8th 2016 starting at 11.30h CET.

The webinar will be presented by Miguel Casas, Senior Partner of Energinvest (project partner of CITYnvest). He will focus on the presentation of the CITYnvest study and on the review of local authority innovative large scale retrofit financing and operational models.

CITYnvest is an EU-funded project that focuses on supporting and replicating successful innovative financing models for energy efficiency renovations in public buildings.

Miguel Casas will talk about the 24 case studies analysed by CITYnvest and will present three examples of financing and operational models: Liège, Murcia and Rodhope. The 24 analysed models address large scale and deep energy efficiency programmes involving public authorities across Europe (11 countries). At the end, there will be time for questions and answers.”

REGISTER NOW!

Besides we would like to kindly remind you we are looking for case studies on business models that can serve as good examples for other smart city initiatives. Therefore, we encourage you to share your experience in this field by sending the CANVAS template filled with the information about your smart city project by 4th September 2016 to Anja De Cunto: Anja.DeCunto@eurocities.eu
If you already have a case study of your business model ready in another format, feel free to send it to us in the format/template you already have.”

A webinars series to support competitiveness of European SMEs in the ICT sector

Why Webinars on energy efficiency in ICT?

SMEs are the backbone of the European economy, with almost 800,000 of them playing in the ICT sector, where they employ some 5.8 million workers. Besides, ICT is currently responsible for 8-10% of the European Union’s electricity consumption and up to 4% of its carbon emissions, but 55% of firms say they find it hard to make resource efficiency a part of their core business.
The ICT sector could save EUR 600 billion thanks to energy efficiency in 2020 by decreasing just 15% of its emissions, according to a report from The Climate Group. There is a pressing need for the European ICT sector to take a leading role in energy efficiency and to reduce the overall costs. Approaching the topic of energy efficiency and carbon footprint now ensures your SME a competitive edge for the coming years!

1st Webinar – 12th July 2016 – “How Energy efficiency can lead your business growth”

SMEs must plan their strategy to improve energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint: The first webinar provided by ICTFOOTPRINT.eu is an opportunity to get a head start along this path, by gaining free, insightful and updated knowledge on ICT energy efficiency.
In this 30-minute webinar, Silvana Muscella, CEO of Trust-IT Services, and Benoît Tinetti from Deloitte Sustainability will share their broad experience on the value of energy efficiency in ICT. The relevance of sustainable energy measures in ICT will be explained, showing how it leads to business growth and competitive edge. The audience will learn how ICTFOOTPRINT.eu can help in the journey to energy efficiency. The webinar will present also the business opportunities stemming from launch of the ICTFOOTPRINT.eu online marketplace.
The webinar brings together both demand & supply side of more environmentally friendly solutions in ICT: organisations willing to adopt low-carbon footprint and energy efficient solutions for their ICT needs, as well as low-carbon footprint solution providers. A level playing field will be established to accelerate the uptake of energy efficient ICT solutions among ICT-intensive organisations in Europe.

The webinar is for any European ICT player that needs to improve its energy efficiency in ICT. To join the webinar (July 12th at 14:30 CEST) is free of charge: simply register here https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/13847/212601

ICT Webinars for information, training and support: A series of 12 events, free of cost and open to all

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu is launching a series of 12 on-line webinars. From July 12th 2016 and until late 2018, ICTFOOTPRINT.eu will inform, encourage and support players of the ICT sector to adopt energy efficiency processes in their businesses. ICTFOOTPRINT.eu will offer a compelling set of tips and tools to tackle energy efficiency themes and let you enjoy competitive edge from practicing energy efficiency in your ICT processes & procedures.

The launch of the online consultation of the Citizen Focus Manifesto, Inclusive Smart Cities: A European Manifesto on Citizen Engagement, has recently been announced.

The Citizen Focus Action Cluster of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) has prepared a first version of this policy document along the past months. At the General Assembly, further inputs have been collected and integrated in the version you’ll find online as a living document. The aim of the Citizen Focus Action Cluster is to refine this version in a participatory process open to comments and feedbacks from cities, regions and smart cities stakeholders across Europe.

The Consultation will last until September 15th. After that time, they will consolidate the document and start the membership campaign.  The final version of the Manifesto will be presented with its signatories at the Conference on Inclusive Smart Cities due to take place on November 23rd in Brussels.

If you misses the exciting and interesting F2F open market consultations from Antwerp, Helsinki and Copenhagen don’t worry, you will still have the chance to ask SELECT for Cities representatives live questions about our PCP tender via the webinar we are organizing on June 28th from 4-6 PM, CET time when we will also present the project overall.

​This webinar is opened to anyone interested in the PCP procurement competition. In order to participate just click on this link. Looking forward to seeing you all !

The role information and communication technology-based (ICT) solutions can play in improving energy efficiency and energy security across Europe, and ways to make ICT ‘greener’ were on the agenda of a half-day Green Digital Charter (GDC) workshop organised by EUROCITIES on 16 June in Brussels. The participants in the event, held in the framework of the EU Sustainable Energy Week, also discussed initiatives aimed at increased citizen involvement and more efficient knowledge management.

Fourteen speakers took the floor in four sessions. They included officials of the European Commission, as well as academics and representatives of smart cities and green ICT organisations.

Vast untapped potential

Cities have vast – although as yet largely untapped – potential to lead by example. By sharing their strategies and exhibiting their projects, they can encourage and enthuse their hesitant peers, said one of the speakers. The examples cited included Linköping municipality’s data centre, which is run by hydropower, and the ‘virtualisation’ of the servers in Nantes metropole, which has resulted in over 10,000 kWh of energy savings a year. In Amsterdam, the switch to green ICT solutions for power management has led to 20% less energy being consumed.

Meanwhile, joint projects are also busy developing tools and methods to harness this potential. The ICTFOOTPRINT.eu project aims to create a common framework and online tools for the measurement of energy and environmental efficiency in the ICT sector; and GREENSPECTOR is a software ecodesign solution for software developers to reduce their power consumption.

Working with citizens

According to David Ludlow, associate professor European smart cities at the University of the West of England, data are fundamental to shaping the future of cities. Accordingly, municipal authorities should spare no effort to collaborate with citizens on issues related to the collection and use of data.

Alec Walker-Love, communication specialist for the CITyFiED project, said that citizen engagement requires more than effective communication. In this process, the decision makers must heed the public’s concerns, ideas, needs and values. There is no long-term behaviour change without an inclusive and collaborative approach to decision making, he said.

The Sharing Cities ‘lighthouse’ programme was cited as one that puts citizens in the equation. It entails several engaging activities, where citizens are encouraged to co-design services and digital interfaces. Finally, a representative of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) explained how and why they place people at the heart of product development and innovation.

Knowledge sharing a key to success

Knowledge sharing is a key element of the smart city concept. It entails power networking and solution-focused collaboration. EUROCITIES regularly brings together its members (politicians and technical experts alike) and encourages them to exchange views about their local ambitions and challenges and to learn from each other.

A representative of the European Energy Award, a very important scheme that involves hundreds of cities in Central Europe, presented the network’s methods for planning, implementing and monitoring energy and climate-related projects and how it brings cities and stakeholders together to create an ecosystem of organisations and best practices.

The Smart Cities Information System (SCIS) provides information based on data and results collected from smart city projects. Its objectives are to enable stakeholders to compare notes; identify best practices; and discuss challenges and solutions. The SCIS submits policy recommendations to the European Commission.

The aim of the CITYkeys project is to design a holistic framework for monitoring, measuring and comparing the performance and implementation of smart city solutions and projects in European cities. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a powerful tool for communicating project status, progress, and feasibility  both internally and externally.

The speakers’ presentations are available here:

• Charlotte Spoerndli – International office, European Energy Award
• David Ludlow – Associate Professor European Smart Cities, University of the West of England, URBIS and DECUMANUS Solutions
• Fredrik Eriksson – ICT Strategy Officer, City of Linköping
• Thierry Leboucq – Chairman, GREENSPECTOR
• Matthieu Clavier – Digital Infrastructure Chief Architect, Nantes Metropole
• Jaak Vlasveld – Director, Green IT Amsterdam
• Nikolaos Kontinakis – Project coordinator, EUROCITIES, ICTfootprint.eu project
• Alec Walker-Love – Communication Specialist, CITyFiED & My Smart City District
• Bernadett Köteles-Degrendele – Smart cities project coordinator, EUROCITIES, Sharing Cities project
• Paul Davies – Head of Bristol-Brussels Office, SoLa Bristol project
• Miimu Airaksinen – Research Professor and Programme Manager, VTT
• Yana Pargova – Communication Project Manager, GOPACom, Smart Cities Information System (SCIS)

We speak to Christophe Colinet, smart city project manager in Bordeaux, one of the signatories of our Green Digital Charter, about what becoming smarter means for his city.

Can you describe your role in the city in a few words?

I joined the city of Bordeaux in 2005 as head of operational maintenance for infrastructure for the city’s servers. In 2008, I created a new R&D service dedicated to innovative technical solutions adapted to Bordeaux’s information system, and then in 2012 I took over the digital territory management. At the beginning of this year, I joined the Metropolis administration following a partnership between the city of Bordeaux, eight surrounding cities and the agglomeration to create a single digital department. As smart city project manager, I’m now in charge of smart city and European digital projects for the metropolis area.

What does ‘smart city’ mean to Bordeaux?

For Bordeaux, the smart city is a new societal model that puts citizens, businesses and all territorial stakeholders at the centre of the community’s concerns. The European Innovation Partnership’s (EIP) definition reflects this approach: ‘Smart cities should be regarded as systems of people interacting with and using flows of energy, materials, services, and financing  to catalyse sustainable economic development, resilience and high quality of life; these flows and interactions become smart through making strategic use of information and communication infrastructure and services in a process of transparent urban planning and management that is responsive to the social and economic needs of society.’

Do you have a smart city strategy or plan in place?

Given the new organisation in our city, our smart city strategy is not yet in place, but still in progress. We aim to publish it later this year or in early 2017.

How will you measure or evaluate its results?

The strategy is still being defined, but I will propose using the CITYkeys key performance indicators for smart cities to assess the progress of our smart city strategy.

From your experience, what are the main challenges Bordeaux faces in the transition to a ‘smarter’ city?

The main challenge is getting the support and strong political backing to assume the transition to become a smarter city. This is a subject that should be dealt with at the highest political level. With that in place, the supporting administrative organisation can deliver the necessary services based on this political will.

What is the role of the citizens? How are you involving them in this effort?

Over the last two to three years, we have launched various initiatives involving citizens in building the smart city, but as yet not on a large scale. For example, 100 families are now involved in an incentive programme for energy management called ‘Familles à énergie positive’.

Another programme called ‘Les pionniers’ allowed us to recruit 100 citizens to evaluate mobile applications and other web services provided by the metropolis.

Bordeaux is one of the Green Digital Charter signatories. How do you expect to benefit from that initiative?

Bordeaux already benefits from signing the charter. It has allowed us to build inter-departmental working groups that are live for a period of two years in the city of Bordeaux, and these are now spreading to the metropolis departments. In my opinion, our signature of the charter was the first building block in our smart city dissemination strategy.

Can you pick one idea or project that the city feels proud of and you would like to share with us?

Compass 4D is a project of which we are proud as it brings together all the criteria we seek to implement in the Bordeaux Smart City project. It is a transversal project, which we share at European level with five other cities. It involves citizens, local businesses and all communities and provides services that aim to build a more sustainable and secure city with a higher quality of life.

EUROCITIES smart cities month takes place from 17 May until 17 June. Follow us on Twitter @EUROCITIEStweet and join the campaign via #smartercities

The 18th May 2016, had a select group of experts striving for a greener economy gathered in Brussels to discuss the adoption across the European Union of new energy efficiency metrics and methodologies in the drive towards greener and more sustainable ICT-Information and Communication Technologies.

The meeting hosted at the European Commission premises was a first step towards consensus building around the value of ICTFOOTPRINT.eu, a timely European initiative for creating awareness on energy efficiency best practices while giving ICT players the tools they need to put them into practice.

Lowering entry barriers to energy efficiency

Deloitte Sustainability highlighted a major concern emerging from its most recent survey. Almost 50% of the companies surveyed are unfamiliar about ICT methodologies designed to help their organisations become more energy efficient, which clearly impedes cost reductions and ultimately environmental impact. Barriers to implementing the necessary actions span lack of time, incentives, knowledge and especially lack of tangible evidence about benefits to be gained.

These findings helped to shape the agenda of the ‘End-user requirements gathering and validation’ meeting with its focus on the role of ICTFOOTPRINT.eu in enabling practical implementation with affordable investments in effective methodologies, which are key to reaching energy efficiency targets and facilitating sustainable energy strategies.

We are organising an Energy Days workshop about “ICT applications in cities: delivering the energy union objectives”,  on Thursday, 16 June 2016 from 09:00 to 13:30 (CEST) within the framework of the EU Sustainable Energy Week in Brussels.

This workshop is going to put the focus on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for energy efficiency and on the reduction of ICT’s direct carbon footprint. Local government representatives (technical officers as well as politicians) will share smart city solutions and best practices. Experts will provide the participants with insightful perspectives on green ICT solutions delivering on the Energy Union ambitions. The purpose of this meeting is also to raise awareness and engage further with citizens and SMEs from the ICT sector.

>>Context and programme 

>>Registration

Five days – five different online seminars about key issues and challenges for smarter, greener towns, cities and districts.

The My Smart City District cluster of 25 cities in 13 countries is putting on a series of online seminars – the Lunch Academy – set to take place 11:30-12:15 every day of the EU Sustainable Energy week 13-17 June. And all for free! On the MSCD Lunch Academy menu, you’ll see five topics about which international projects will deliver their own real-world insights and key tips challenged and enhanced by an expert commentator.

Programme

• FINANCE: Monday 13 June. Economic aspects of retrofitting, balancing limited financial resources and how to produce replicable models with examples from ZenN, EU-GUGLE & expert input from CITYnvest/ Climate Alliance
• CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT: Tuesday 14 June. A valuable opportunity to learn more about linking smart cities with smart citizens with input from CITyFiED,CITY-ZEN and expert commentator EngageCitizen
• RETROFITTING: Wednesday 15 June. Designing, implementing and ultimately delivering smart retrofitting at district level courtesy of CITY-ZEN, R2CITIES, and invited experts of ECTP
• DISTRICT HEATING & COOLING: Thursday 16 June. A seminar on district heating and cooling solutions for the future with examples from READY,CELSIUS and expert challenger from EuroHeat & Power
• REPLICATING @ SCALE: Friday 17 June. How to get cities smarter and more energy efficient faster, with less risk: replication and achieving scale in smart cities with SINFONIA, CITyFiED, and invited experts of BPIE

Register here: http://eepurl.com/bZ-3ZL

On Tuesday 3 May, the GuiDanCe and Sharing Cities projects held a joint webinar on the theme of urban platforms.

Urban Platforms form a core building block by which cities better manage the current explosion in volumes of city data and more easily share this data between city services in order to improve outcomes for society. Few cities in Europe have implemented such solutions.

Graham Colclough (Urban DNA – EIP SCC Integrated Infrastructure Action Cluster Chair), has first set the context of this webinar and talked about the work being undertaken in the frame  of the Integrated Infrastructure Action Cluster of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities & Communities (EIP SCC) initiative.

More information:

• https://eu-smartcities.eu/content/urban-platforms
• Letter of Intent
• Memorandum of Understanding

Larissa Suzuki (Greater London Authority) provided an insightful overview the ‘Requirements Specification for Urban Platforms’ document and city-needs-led approach (see her presentation).

The Sharing Cities project’s “Urban Sharing Platform” was then presented by Graham Colclough (see his presentation).

Finally, Paulo Calçada (Associação Porto Digital) and Larissa Suzuki shared Porto’s and London’s experiences with urban platforms.

Play the recording of the webinar on GDC youTube channel : https://youtu.be/sa4WZq6dXFY.

On 20 May 2016, a webinar focusing on the project development assistance (PDA) under Horizon 2020 will be held between 10 and 11 am. It will be followed by a live Q&A via Twitter.

More details on how to connect are provided in the EASME News.

The Energy Efficiency call for proposals of the European programme Horizon 2020 supports the implementation of the EU’s energy and climate policies. In this context, funding is available for proposals addressing finance for sustainable energy, i.e. investments in energy efficiency and renewables, and, in particular, “project development assistance“.

Project development assistance:

The aim is to help public or private organisations to build technical, economic and legal expertise needed for project development and to design innovative solutions which can serve as showcases for further projects in the EU. PDA projects:

• Support the development of investments in energy efficiency and renewables;
• Can fund all steps necessary to launch an investment, e.g.:
  • Feasibility studies,
  • Technical specifications,
  • Procurement procedures,
  • Business plans and financial engineering,
  • Stakeholder and community mobilisation etc.;
• Should trigger investments of at least EUR 15 million for every million EURO of Horizon 2020 support;
• Can cover various sectors:
  • Existing public and private buildings,
  • Street lighting,
  • Retrofitting of existing district heating/cooling,
  • Energy efficiency in urban transport,
  • Energy efficiency in industry and services;
• Can be proposed by 1 public or private entity (single country applications are eligible), e.g.:
  • Public authorities or their groupings;
  • Private/public infrastructure operators and bodies,
  • Estate managers,
  • Energy service companies;
  • Retail chains, services, industry.

You can find examples of such projects here: http://bit.ly/1WlzUFg.

The deadline for applications is 15 September 2016.

The Energy Efficiency call for proposals of 15 September 2016 also covers the following areas: Consumers, Buildings, Heating & Cooling, Industry & Products.

SELECT for Cities, an initiative that’s changing the way cities in Europe innovate through the creation of city wide Internet-of-Everything (IoE) testing labs, launched an open online consultation at the NetFutures conference in Brussels on 20 April 2016.

The link to the online consultation is: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SELECT4Cities

The aim of this newly launched consultation is for the procuring cities to hear the thoughts and views of potential suppliers, developers, city experts and other cities, about the current Internet-of Things (IoT) market, and its potential gaps and needs.

In addition to the online consultation, solution providers and other stakeholders across Europe are also invited to participate in one of three open meetings this Spring to discuss city needs and the pre-commercial procurement (PCP) process in more detail. The meetings are taking place in Antwerp on the 24 May, Helsinki on the 30 May and Copenhagen on the 6 June and are open and free to attend.

For more information, you can read the full press release here.

A new GuiDanCe publication on what cities should know about the Green Digital Landscape is now available:

According to the author of this paper, Jan Dictus, the digital revolution offers an opportunity to make our society greener, and therefore it is too important to leave the revolution only to the experts, the scientists and the industries. Local government, citizens and politicians have a crucial role.

The main target group for this publication are local authorities, both politicians and officers, who are interested in using the digital possibilities for the best of their citizens, together with other leading cities in Europe.

This paper explains what the information revolution can mean for citizens and what it can mean for city governments. It gives some insight in the big amount of initiatives that are being developed for cities and for industries.

To download this publication, click here.

EUROCITIES is now leading the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) action cluster on business models, financing and procurement for smart cities (AC BM).

This interview originally appeared on the EIP SCC website: eu-smartcities.eu/content/interview-nathalie-guri

On Wednesday 30 March, we gave the floor to experts in the field of standards and interoperability.

Nikolaos Kontinakis (EUROCITIES) welcomed all participants and gave an update on the Green Digital Charter and GuiDanCe project (see his presentation).

Christophe Colinet, from Bordeaux metropole and Chair of EUROCITIES working group on standards & interoperability, spoke about the state of the art on the development of common standards and provided insightful information about interoperability and standardisation issues (see his presentation).

Bart de Lathouwer, ESPRESSO project coordinator and responsible for planning and managing interoperability initiatives at OGC Europe, presented the ESPRESSO project and stressed that stakeholders’ inputs are key to develop a “Conceptual Smart City Information Framework” (see his presentation). He invited cities and experts to join the SmaCStak-Network and contribute to the project’s outcomes.

Finally, John Ketchell, ANEC representative, introduced the CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Smart Cities and Communities Co-ordination Group and explained the importance of strengthening awareness and collaboration around standardisation work (see his presentation).

Play the recording of the webinar on GDC YouTube channel : https://youtu.be/NM2SUngQwjI.

Signatory cities can send suggestions for possible themes and speakers of our future webinars.

For our Horizon 2020 funded project GuiDanCE (grant agreement 653640) EUROCITIES is interested in concluding a framework agreement with a company able to support the fulfilling of the project tasks related to video production.

The individual/company will be selected on the basis of a set of criteria:

• Willingness and ability to perform the mentioned tasks and meet the specifications in time and on budget
• Quality and experience

The deadline to show your company interest in collaborating with EUROCITIES is Monday 21 March.

More information are available in the document Call for framework agreement_GDC videos.

Does your city want to use the full potential of ever-increasing data volumes? Does your city open up public data? Do you have an urban platform or are about to deploy one? Then the‘Urban Platforms’ initiative within the EIP Smart Cities is for you.

Within the EIP a group of 17 cities led by London have looked more closely at those topics, and realised that urban platforms provide a vital foundation for smart city infrastructure and service improvements. Together they have developed a common core set of city-needs-led requirements to support the acquisition of “Urban Platforms”, co-developed and validated by 17 EU cities, including London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Syracuse, Berlin, Ghent, Valencia, Murcia, Derry, Copenhagen, Scottish cities, Porto and Riga.
Here you can get a preview of what they have come up with. Join them by signing the Letter of Intent and you will get full access to all documents and can learn with them. Related supporting documents, like procurement templates are in preparation and the ongoing cooperation with the supply side and standardization add a particularly interesting angle.
Don’t forget to sign up to the General Assembly of the EIP on 24 May to interact face-to-face!
For more information please contact: cnect-mou-urbanplatforms@ec.europa.eu

The GDC signatories have committed to deploy five large-scale pilot projects within five years from the charter’s signature with the purpose of demonstrating the energy efficiency benefits that can be brought about by ICT. They have furthermore committed to decrease ICT’s direct carbon footprint in their city by 30% within ten years from signature.

The progresses and achievements of cities have recently been reported in two GDC publications.

GDC Case Studies

GDC Monitoring Report

The first edition of the GDC Monitoring Report provides with an overview of signatory cities’ steps towards meeting GDC objectives. Its main conclusions are based on evidence collected through the Green Digital Charter survey, which was developed under the Horizon 2020-funded GuiDanCe project.

The survey collected evidence-based self-assessments of progress on the GDC commitments. The signatories were asked whether their city meets the commitments contained in the declaration fully, partly or not at all. They were also requested to provide evidence for their assessment. A total of 18 Green Digital Charter signatory cities participated in the survey, providing a wealth of information on ICT-related developments and the evolution of their sustainability and smart city strategies at local and national levels. Responses were received from: Bordeaux, Burgas, Edinburgh, Gdynia, Genova, Glasgow, Malmö, Manchester, Murcia, Naples, Oulu, Prague, Riga, Roubaix, Skopje, Valencia, Zagreb and Zaragoza.

The report confirms that the cities use the Green Digital Charter to promote their green ICT objectives and to support local development efforts towards a smarter city, although a few challenges have been identified.

With regards to successful stories and achievements, a catalogue of case studies and recently started projects has been produced. This publication gathers implemented actions associated with green digital developments and planned actions in key policy domains. Innovative solutions related to buildings, energy, green ICT, street lighting, transport, e-participation, waste management, and cross-domain are presented. Each city profile includes relevant web links and contact information to help you plan and organise your own study tour.

The Green Digital Charter collaborates with a new EU funded project! ICTFOOTPRINT.eu is the European support action in the field of energy & environmental efficiency in ICT. It is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Programme and it aims to create an independent information & services hub for organisations in Europe.

The use of ICT is currently responsible for 8-10% of the EU’s electricity consumption and up to 4% of its carbon emissions. With a wise energy and environmental efficiency strategy, the ICT sector can save around 15% of global emissions in 2020, mainly through sectors like transport, energy, industry and buildings. It is urgent that energy efficiency measures are applied in order to counterbalance the expected growth in ICT: ICTFOOTPRINT.eu will strive to contribute to this goal.

Methodologies are already available to stakeholders but their visibility and workability must be improved, and they do not provide, in a simple and usable form, the information and the resources to perform carbon footprint calculations: ICTFOOTPRINT.eu will address this aspect, by developing a high-usability online platform.

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu, in its 36-month workplan, will deliver a platform with online services in the field of energy & environmental efficiency: These services will include practical information related to energy and carbon footprint methodologies and indicators, advisory services to green procurement, and one-on-one help desk services.

See the full press release.

✔ Visit ICTFOOTPRINT.eu website: http://www.ictfootprint.eu/

✔ Follow ICTFOOTPRINT.eu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICTFOOTPRINTeu | @ ICTFOOTPRINTeu

✔ Connect with ICTFOOTPRINT.eu on LinkedIn: https://be.linkedin.com/in/ictfootprinteu

✔Pre-register to subscribe to the ICTFOOTPRINT.eu newsletter

On Wednesday 24 February we held our first webinar on digital strategies!

Anna Melchor Perez, smart city program officer at InnDEA Valencia, presented the innovative smart city platform of the city which uses fi-ware technology (see the presentation Digital Agenda Valencia).

Bart Rosseau, responsible for the data and information management at the city of Gent, introduced some of the challenges and the actors necessary in order to include the digital aspect in the overall strategy for the city (see the presentation Digital Agenda Gent) .

Finally, Birgit Ginzler, head of communications at TINA Vienna, presented the ambitious and inclusive process that brought to the development of the digital agenda wien and its projects (see the presentation Digital Agenda Vienna).

Play the recording of the webinar on our YouTube channel : https://youtu.be/pq4Qh0CJ3uo

The focus of next planned webinars will be on urban platforms (16 March) and standards (30 March). More info and registration.

Signatory cities can send suggestions for possible themes and speakers of our future webinars.

The Market Place Initiatives are open to new collaborators! Do not hesitate to get in contact with the initiative you wish to become active in.

Sustainable Urban Mobility

• Electromobility aims to advance integrated solutions for electric mobility and their integration in smart cities.
• New Mobility Services help to better integrate and manage urban transport and contribute to the development of collective systems for seamless multi-modal mobility (door-to-door) based on ITC.

Integrated Infrastructures and Processes

• Humble Lamppost aims to aggregate demand and achieve a large scale EU smart lighting solutions deployment.
• Urban Platforms accelerate the adoption of urban platforms across EU cities, specifically to serve 300 million European citizens with urban platforms in their cities by 2025.

Citizen Focus

• Start from Existing Habits and Identify Needs: Co-Design & Co-Creation as Tools analyse how the use of innovative methods and tools dedicated to participation and engagement such as Co-design and Co-creation meet the needs of citizens.
• Citizen-Centric Approach to Data produces recommendations and guidelines on privacy impact assessment and privacy by design.
• Citizen and Stakeholders Communication Platforms definekey problems and recommend solutions related to citizen communication and knowledge sharing policy and practice.

Business Models

• Innovative Business Models Use Cases analyse real business models developed in Smart Cities projects.

Integrated Planning, Policy and Regulation

• From Planning to Implementation aims to share and tap knowledge during the realisation phase of Smart City strategies through the implementation of Smart City activities.
• Tools for Decision Making and Benchmarking is focused on the identification of needs for decision makers taking the decision to enter a smart and sustainable program, city or community.
• Six Nations Forum accelerates the take up of smart sustainable city solutions through supporting a more conducive environment for all stakeholders, it has  established a Smart City Forum. It comprises a limited number of leading EU nations, represented by the lead Dept(s)/Agency(ies) that steer the smart city and/or sustainable urban agenda.

The EIP-SCC Roadmap 2016 “Supporting smarter European cities: better quality of life, growth, jobs and decarbonisation” identifies the key targets for this year in terms of collaboration among cities, industry and other key partners.

In addition, it details the roll-out actions to be undertaken to achieve its goals. The focus is the deployment of technology and service innovation at scale in the fields of interoperable urban platforms, intelligent lampposts, positive energy blocks, smart electro-mobility solutions andsmart mobility services.

It also takes into account the enabling roles of collaborative actions such as new business models and financing arrangements, new strategies and tools to increase citizen focus and engagement, new strategies and tools for integrated planning and decision-making.

Click here to download the document.

For more information, click here.

The GuiDanCe activities aim to support GDC signatory cities in implementing their commitments. On 21 January, the Green Digital Charter contact point presented some of its planned activities to the EUROCITIES knowledge society forum, taking place in Brussels.

A new text

The Green Digital Charter initiative has the aim to be a live document that adapts to contemporary developments and in particular to the impact of information and communication technologies on the lives and needs of citizens.

The updated Green Digital Charter commits cities to working together to deliver on the EU’s objective of expanding the use of digital technologies in a way that improves the life of their citizens and addresses the challenges of growth, sustainability and resilience.

At the same time, the GDC  wants to reflect the main policy and technology developments taking place at local, national and international level.

Funding, training and networking

EUROCITIES and the GDC contact point will continue to provide information on EU funding opportunities and will organise annual brokerage events dedicated to the subject of smart cities. Further connections with the European Investment Bank will also be made, in an attempt to establish loan schemes supporting ICT and smart city solutions.

On-site trainings and online webinars are being planned throughout 2016 and 2017. The topics will reflect the challenges faced by the signatory cities: drafting digital strategies, developing urban platforms and defining key performance indicators, standards and metrics.

Work shadowing events will pair up cities that face similar challenges but are at different stages of implementation. These events will aim to improve the implementation of local ICT and smart city-related policies.

Finally, the GuiDanCe project will continue to update and inspire cities on the best practices of the other signatories (collections of case studies, online toolkit, roadshow and Green Digital Charter Award).

Synergies

The Green Digital Charter will continue to work with the existing initiatives and relevant stakeholders and projects which bring added value to the training and networking opportunities offered by the GuiDanCe project.

These include:

• the Urban Platform initiative, the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities and the new integrated Covenant of Mayors
• the EU-funded CITYkeys project, which defines key performance indicators and data collection procedures for the common and transparent monitoring of smart city solutions
• the recently started ICT footprint.eu project, which aims to raise awareness in a consolidated manner at European level on metrics, methodologies and best practices in measuring the energy and environmental efficiency of the ICT sector in order to facilitate their broad deployment and uptake
• the European Assistance for Innovation Procurement initiative
• the European standardisation organisation CEN-CENELEC.

See the presentation to the KSF forum.

The Green Digital Charter will collaborate with a newly started EU funded project: ICTfootprint.eu.

The central goal of ICTFOOTPRINT.eu is to become “the” consolidated effort that, at European level, raises awareness on metrics, methodologies and best practices in measuring the energy and environmental efficiency of the ICT-sector, to facilitate their broad deployment and uptake.

The central goal of ICTFOOTPRINT.eu will be to set up a multichannel platform which will provide the necessary tools, as well as training and assistance to cities and smaller private organisations, to promote methodologies for measurement of carbon footprint in the ICT sector.

By participating in ICTFOOTPRINT.eu the Green Digital Charter wants to support the city efforts to decrease of ICT’s direct carbon footprint per city by 30% within 10 years.

The objectives of the project are:

Objective 1: Create an Support Framework Platform that informs end-users of the existence of the methodologies available and supports them in lowering barriers to entry.

Objective 2: Design user-oriented, online implementation of footprinting methodologies.

Objective 3: Develop a web application “Service Area” targeting SMEs to help assess carbon and energy footprint and share experiences.

Objective 4: Create an aggregated community for solution providers and consumers in the field of energy and environmental efficiency in the ICT sector, with a marketplace of opportunities.

Objective 5: Raise awareness, educate and empower (prospective) SMEs (and all other end-users) with actions and showcases, as well as informative material to promote green strategies.

Objective 6: Interface and liaise with the relevant standards bodies (SDOs).

Objective 7: Leave a lasting legacy with the policy makers on how to further enlarge its impact among all the stakeholders.

Objective 8: Develop and implement a sustainable business model.

Objective 9: A committed, highly influential External Advisory Group (EAG) that provides independent support in covering the needs of the targeted stakeholders.

The Green Digital Charter initiative has the aim to be a live document that adapts to contemporary developments and in particular to the impact of information and communication technologies have on the lives and needs of citizens.

During the last EUROCITIES knowledge society forum meeting in Brussels we presented the draft text of the new Green Digital Charter to the members and signatory of the initiative.

The updated Green Digital Charter commits cities to working together to deliver on the EU’s objective of expanding the use of digital technologies in a way that improves the life of their citizens and addresses the challenges of growth, sustainability and resilience.

At the same time, the GDC wants to reflect the main policy and technology developments taking place at local, national and international level and collaborate with initiatives, communications and projects which are directly relevant to the implementation of the Green Digital Charter for cities and citizens.

The final version of the text will be announced in the next months with a ceremony event.

Read the updated GDC text.

2016 marks the start of the Green Digital Charter training activities under GuiDanCe!

The Green Digital Charter monitoring report wants to provide an overview of the main trends and development of the signatory cities towards their commitments. The report, first of a series, will be available in March 2016.

By and large, cities are on track to meeting their GDC commitments, although a few challenges remain. These can be grouped in three main categories: (i) funding, (ii) governance and (iii) data, standards and interoperability.

Concept of Hand with Electronic Fingerprints — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

The GuiDanCe project is working closely with the signatory cities to look at these challenges and shape its future activities accordingly.

On-site trainings and online webinars are being planned throughout 2016 and 2017 which reflect the challenges faced by the signatory cities. Work shadowing events will pair up cities that face similar challenges, but are at different stages of implementation. These events will aim to improve the implementation of local ICT and smart city-related policies.

What’s next?

WEBINAR

24 February: Digital strategies

How are European cities creating local digital strategies? Which steps and which actors are involved in the process? In this webinar, the representative from the city of Valencia, Gent and Vienna (tbc) will present their dos and don’ts coming from their city experience in developing successful strategies to promote ICT solution.

16 March: Urban platforms

Urban Platforms form a core building block by which cities better manage the current explosion in volumes of city data and more easily share this data between city services in order to improve outcomes for society. Few cities in Europe have implemented such solutions. Let’s hear from their experience!

30 March: Standards

Standards and interoperability reduce the cost of ICT solutions making them widely available throughout Europe. This webinar will present the work done until now by cities. More information will follow.

To register for one or more of these webinars click here.

The European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities will hold its 2016 General Assembly on May 24 in Eindhoven (Netherlands). Over 400 participants are expected, making it one of the most important smart city innovation events in Europe.

In its third edition, this event is the place to be for learning about key policy and market trends and creating new contacts and networks. The Partnership is in full implementation mode, bringing together cities and companies framed by a set of core roll-out initiatives that will shape a European market place for smart cities.

EUROCITIES is looking for a designer to support the development of the Green Digital Charter publications.

More information and work description in the Call for tender_GDC Design.

The deadline to express your interest for collaborating is Friday 22 January at noon.

The city of Gothenburg, a recent signatory of the Green Digital Charter initative, has set the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to six tons per person by 2035 –from eight tons per person today to a maximum of two tons-. The achievement would make this already international city into ‘Green Gothenburg’. Green system solutions within constructions, energy, transport, water and waste management have been implemented for the transition to a fossil free city.

Today, houses are heated by waste heat from refineries and waste management, buses are run on electricity or biogas and homes are cooled by cold water from the river. Since May 2015 the entire waste collection fleet is fossil free. There are also innovative solutions for energy-efficient homes, both new-builds and refurbishment of the existing building stock. Furthermore, investments are being made in renewable energy such as solar, wind and wave power.

In March 2015 this development was recognized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) appointing Gothenburg to National Earth Hour Capital 2015.

Local actors such as the energy company Gothenburg Energy, Johanneberg Science Park and Lindholmen Science Park, the Technical University of Chalmers and the University of Gothenburg contribute jointly with innovation and research to reach the goals. They are, as well, supported by projects such as ElectriCity, Drive Me, Celsius, Step-Up and EU-GUGLE.

The article originally appeared on the EIP-SCC website.

How are cities are using digital technologies to tackle climate change?

Signatories of the GDC initiative discussed ways in which they use ICT to reduce emissions during the session ‘Green Digital Charter – smart city solutions for energy efficiency and climate change’ during COP 21 in Paris on 8 December.

Johanna Rolland, mayor of Nantes, opened the session by reiterating the message that ‘there can be no smart cities without smart citizens’.

The session featured a panel of politicians alongside Johanna Rolland: George Ferguson, mayor of Bristol; Milan Obradovic, deputy mayor of Malmo; and Jaroslaw Jozwiak, deputy mayor of Warsaw.

Panellists discussed what becoming a smarter city means to them, and how this contributes to their greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets. They also explored how initiatives such as the Green Digital Charter, support their efforts to become smarter cities. Cities also shared ideas on the kind of support they need to scale up their efforts and improve results.

Some of the panelists referred to the potential of ICT for energy efficiency to promote social inclusion in cities, with George Ferguson commenting that: “Using technology is always about what you can do for people.” Malmo’s Milan Obradovic said that his city uses refurbishments for energy efficiency in housing to create jobs (CLICC). Speaking about the importance of cities as part of a global climate deal, George Ferguson stated that: “Cities will do their best to close any gap left after the close of the COP 21 negotiations.”

The Green Digital Charter now has nearly 50 signatories committed to reducing emissions through ICT and tackling climate change through the innovative use of digital technologies in cities. The GuiDanCe project has been supporting signatories’ efforts since March 2015.

Gothenburg signed the Green Digital Charter (GDC) on 5 November, committing to use ICT and digital technologies for energy efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions.

The European Commission will soon launch a call for tenders for a service contract of a maximum value of EUR 60.000.

The purpose of this call for tenders is to gain insights into the current data-related situation (taxonomy, mapping, gap analysis, players, business models, applicable legislation, bottlenecks and their cause) in the context of the adoption and application of smart cities solutions for cities, communities and local stakeholders.

The expected results are:

• an understanding of the most relevant use cases linked to smart city services or solutions.
• an understanding of the most relevant data related considerations around these use cases.
• an understanding of the precise nature of the players and related business models around these use cases.

Special focus has to be put on:

• providing evidence that goes beyond anecdotal situations.
• focusing on the service level rather than the equipment level.
• differentiating larger trends from particular situations.

Interested economic operators can express their interest to participate in the call for tender until 31/12/2015 in writing to CNECT-R2-EOI@ec.europa.eu

More information on the European Commisison website.

CITyFiED and CELSIUS projects join forces to extend tools for a smarter, more energy efficient future to European cities

Register to this two part webinar on resources, energy efficient buildings and concrete district heating and cooling solutions.

The first session, on Tuesday 24 November, will present the alliance between the two projects and introduce the audience to the importance of district heating and cooling in smart cities and energy efficient buildings.

On Wednesday 9 December, the webinar will showcase how the CELSIUS toolbox and the CITyFiED methodology complement each other, showing the synergies between the two projects.

Link to more information: http://bit.ly/1O5nk9H 

In occasion of 2015 COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, the Green Digital Charter will take part in the two week program at the Cities & Regions Pavilion – TAP2015, taking place from 30 November to 11 December 2015 within the “Climate Generations Areas” of the Le Bourget venue.

The session, titled “Green Digital Charter – Smart city solutions for energy efficiency and climate change” feature the best practice of signatory cities in using ICT solutions for energy efficiency.

Description

This session will discuss the impact, benefits and possible improvements of smart city projects in signatory cities that have committed through the Green Digital Charter (GDC) to reduce emissions through ICT and to promote progress in tackling climate change through the innovative use of digital technologies.

The GDC has been signed by almost 50 major European cities that represent more than 26 million citizens. A number of these cities will present their experience and smart city projects they have put in place to contribute to the energy and climate targets of the European Union.

The session will also explore the ambition of GDC to go beyond Europe and the role it can play in the fight against climate change.

Objectives

• Share experiences from signatories of the Green Digital Charter
• Explore city examples from European cities
• Engage city-related stakeholders in the “smart city” movement
• Discuss approaches to promote the GDC model globally

Methodology and Speakers

• Introduction from the facilitator (3 min)
  • Nikolaos Kontinakis, Project Coordinator, EUROCITIES
• Panel discussion – Five cities’ representatives ( 30 min):
  • George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol
  • José Sá Fernandes, Deputy Mayor of Lisbon
  • Johanna Rolland, Mayor of Nantes
  • Jaroslaw Jozwiak, Deputy Mayor of Warsaw
  • Milan Obradovic, Deputy Mayor of Malmo
• Q&A (10 min)
• Wrap-up and conclusions by Michael Klinkenberg, Policy Advisor, EUROCITIES and final remarks from panelists (7 min)

As European Green Capital, Bristol has joined forces with ICLEI, which represents local governments for sustainability, and the City of Paris to co-host the Cities & Regions Pavilion at COP21.

The Pavilion will bring together the voices of cities and local governments to raise the level of ambition, awareness and visibility of existing and potential local climate action.

It will be a lively place of learning, debate and influence, hosting thematic workshops and daily sessions as part of ICLEI’s Transformative Actions Program (TAP).

Further information on the Pavilion and registration details at: www.cities-and-regions.org

Bristol Sessions*

Tuesday 01/12 11:30-13:00 – Bristol: Our Next Big Step – creating a liveable, smart and sustainable city through innovative Public-Private-People partnerships.

In this, Bristol’s opening session at COP, hear from George Ferguson, the Mayor of Bristol and engage with senior leaders from business, Government and the community as they talk about how Public-Private-People partnerships are driving innovation in Bristol to create a resilient future trajectory for the city and its citizens.

Speakers – Mayor George Ferguson

Tuesday 01/12 13:00-14:30 – TAP Time: “Energy Efficiency for Everyone. Bristol Energy: Scaling up investment”.

Bristol is implementing the UK’s largest energy efficiency and renewable energy investment programme and is now planning the next phase, to scale up this investment and achieve significant carbon and energy savings.

Speakers – Barra Mac Ruairi, Strategic Director Place, Bristol City Council

Tuesday 01/12 15:00-17:00 – TAP Time: “The Bristol Brain – Reimagining the way we plan for the future”.

An urban simulator that evolves as the city does, that invites different city actors to play with the city, to imagine different futures and engages them in debate and design to achieve a sustainable, resilient, happy city.

Speakers – Stephen Hilton, Director of Bristol Futures, Bristol City Council

Tuesday 01/12 15:00-16:30 – Economics of a Low Carbon City – mini stern for Cities

This workshop will explore the mini-stern approach to decarbonise a city and the experience of applying it in cities around the world, including the latest results for the city of Bristol.

Speakers – Andrew Gouldson, University of Leeds, UK

Tuesday 01/12 17:00-18:30 – European Green Capitals session

Bristol has invited Daniel Calleja, Director-General of European Commission’s DG Environment to facilitate a debate between the Mayors from the European Green Capital title on their achievements in carbon reduction; their future ambitions; their experience in working with businesses to create jobs and growth in the low carbon economy; and how winning the title has influenced their thinking.

Speakers – Daniel Calleja, Director-General of European Commission’s DG Environment and high-level political representatives of the winning cities

Wednesday 02/12 09:30-10:30 – From a green to a resilient city – what Bristol is doing to secure its future

Bristol shares its stories on what it has been doing as European Green Capital; how and why we joined the 100 Resilient Cities Network; what the emerging priorities are for short term action; and taking the long view, from here to 2065 (Climate and Energy Security Framework and 50 year resilient trajectory).

Speakers – Alex Minshull, City Sustainability Manager and Sarah Toy, Strategic Resilience Officer, Bristol City Council

Wednesday 02/12 10:30–11:30 – Who builds cities? The value and role of partnerships in creating sustainable future cities
This workshop will explore the complex and sophisticated partnership arrangements required at city scale to build the cities of the future.

Speakers – Gary Topp, Development Manager, Bristol Green Capital Partnership

Wednesday 02/12 12:00–13:00 – How to bring sustainability to life in the classroom

This workshop will showcase sessions developed for classroom learning, films and other high quality resources, and a new website being rolled out across the UK and beyond. Key partners included the international animation studio, Aardman Animations.

Speakers – Jo Taylor, Head of Education, Bristol 2015 Ltd

Friday 11/12 13:00-14:30 – Facing the Future

Reflections on COP21 and a discussion on how this may influence cities’ strategies

Speakers – Alex Minshull, City Sustainability Manager, Bristol City Council and Rich Pancost, Director of Cabot’s Institute, University of Bristol

*Times may be subject to change. Please check the website and onsite information for updated information.

The summary, developed by the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cites and Communities brings together the European grants, loans and equity investments supporting the roll-out of smart city solutions.

Colour tags highlight which funds are relevant to which stakeholders: local authorities, SMEs, large companies and civil society.

The document is still in draft phase and will be updated throughout 2016.

Relevant web links

JPI URBAN EUROPE 

EUREKA-SMART CITY

CEF

JU FUEL CELLS & HYDROGEN

LIFE

ERDF

Cohesion Fund

ESF

EAFRD

EMFF

CLLD

H2020

FCH

ECSEL

Public procurement

COSME

EFSI

INNOVFIN

JESSICA/JEREMIE

ELENA

Input given will be used to develop Citizen Engagement strategies in 5 European cities and to inspire many others as part of their dissemination and replication activities.

The 6 short questions are intended to collect feedback of a small sample of experts and experienced citizen engagement practitioners.  An aim of the European Smart City project REMOURBAN is to set out innovative strategies to turn citizens from being passive persons into active actors of the sustainable renovation of the city they live in….

The testimony will be used as part of a major deliverable supporting REMOURBAN cities
to devise and implement successful citizen engagement strategies.

The answer will also be used to help inspire many other similar cities as part of the dissemination and replication activities. This may include publication online and citation in future publications of the project.

The deadline to participate is 30 November 2015

Go to the survey.

The Smart City World Congress provides a platform for innovators to meet with people who can implement their ideas.

Through activities, the exceptional congress features world renowned speakers, and popular side events. It attracts thousands of participants each year, making it consistently the top event for exhibitors and visitors alike.

The Green Digital Charter collaborates with the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities by showcasing the added value of using ICT solutions in cities and the best practices developed by GDC signatories cities.

For more information http://www.smartcityexpo.com/en

Following our successful event on ‘Innovating cities with nature’, which attracted more than 60 participants from around Europe, the GREEN DIGITAL CHARTER project is now working to further support signatory cities wishing to apply for the new smart cities call and the calls relating to the use of nature-based solutions.

Cities interested in applying for these calls should send their questions or concerns to Anja de Cunto (anja.decunto@eurocities.eu) by the end of November.

All the questions we collect will then be referred to the technical experts from DG CONNECT, DG ENER and DG Research and Innovation. Towards the end of the year we will then organise a follow up webinar to answer all your questions.

Final Agenda

Jens Bartholmes – Smart Cities and Communities

Yeroyanni and Guarnacci – Nature Based Solutions

Nikolaos Kontinakis – GDC workshop introduction

Monica Ibido – Smart city standards

Thimo Thoeye – Open Data for Smart Cities

Vivienne Avery – Urban Platform

Miimu Airaksinen – CITYKEYS

 

Koce Trajanovski, mayor of Skopje, signed the Green Digital Charter (GDC) on 13 October. By signing up to the charter, the city makes a strategic commitment to cooperate with other European cities on improving energy efficiency and combatting climate change through ICT.

Skopje became the first non-EU city to sign, joining 47 other GDC signatories. The signature comes after a decision by the Skopje city assembly.

The signature means that Skopje commits to: support and promote the green network of connected cities that are using energy-efficient ICT solutions; develop a common standard for the collection, comparison and analysis of greenhouse gas and other energy data within the city; and apply innovations in ICT to public and other city transport, buildings and public lighting systems. This network of connected cities is important for the economic, social and environment wellbeing of all citizens.

Upon signing, Koce Trajanovski, mayor of Skopje, said: “The city of Skopje became the 48th city in Europe that signed the Green Digital Charter and the first city that signed the charter from the Western Balkans cities. By signing the charter, the city of Skopje undertakes, through cooperation with other city signatories, the greater use of information and communication technologies in order to take action to protect the environment and to increase energy efficiency.“

Already a signatory of the Covenant of Mayors, member of the EUROCITIES knowledge society forum and in the process of designing a smart city local agenda, Rennes Metropole decided it was time to sign the Green Digital Charter.

Rennes Metropole has become the fifth French cities to sign the Green Digital Charter, the initiative commiting cities to reducing CO2 emissions through the use of ICT solutions.

Rennes Metropole’s path towards sustainability began in 2009 when the metropole and the 33 cities within its metropolitan area signed up to the Covenant of Mayors. This strong commitment to becoming a sustainable territory has been further strenghtened by a renewed sustainabile energy action plan that will mobilise the cities together within the context of COP 21.

In November 2014, the French deputy minister for the digital economy awarded Rennes ‘Metropole French Tech’ certification, showing recognition of both the current dynamic digital ecosystem and its potential for international growth.

Rennes Metropole has begun developing a smart city approach which is based on a number of projects addressing energy efficiency or open and connected city challenges. Nevertheless, up until now, the administration has not been able to develop projects that truly combine ICT and energy efficiency.

These reflections by the city have been fuelled by its involvement in the EUROCITIES smart cities working group and the knowledge society forum. Signing up to the GDC will encourage the municipality to develop more ‘ICT for green’ projects and actions to fulfil its smart city agenda.

On signing, Emmanuel Couet, president of Rennes Métropole, said: “Signing this Green Digital Charter is proof of our commitment, together with major European Cities, to implement a new, more ecological and digital Rennes Metropole”.

Picture credit: D. Gouray – Ville de Rennes/Rennes Métropole

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The Green Digital Charter is a declaration committing cities to working together to deliver on the EU climate objectives through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It therefore promotes progress in tackling climate change through the innovative use of digital technologies in cities.

In addition to a range of statements and aims, the Charter entails three specific commitments:

• to work with Green Digital Charter signatories on ICT & energy efficiency
• to deploy five large-scale ICT for energy efficiency pilots per city within 5 years from the signature
• to decrease ICT’s direct carbon footprint per city by 30% within 10 years from the signature

Previously supported by the NiCE project, starting from March 2015 the Green Digital Charter is supported by the new GuiDanCe project, coordinated by EUROCITIES and co-financed by the European Union funding programme Horizon2020.

GDC has developed a portal with two main elements:

• The GDC website (http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/), implemented over the WordPress platform but with considerable proprietary functionality coded and added during the NiCE project
• The GDC online toolkit (http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/toolkit), developed from scratch by the technical partners of NiCE project

WORK DESCRIPTION

EUROCITIES is looking for a company that can handle the following points:

          I.        Adaptation and refreshing of the website in order to follow the new GuiDanCe project

Due to the start of the new supporting project for the Green Digital Charter, the current website will need to be updated by modifying all the graphical and menu references from the previous project NiCE. After the award of the contract, work should start at the beginning of May 2015. Moreover, the website platform (WordPress) and plug-ins (Calendar, maps, etc.) need to be updated. The completion of the website adaptation is expected by end of June 2015. For this task, EUROCITIES will be supplying the basic images, photographs and texts needed to create the templates that will be developed and used.

         II.        Transfer of the website to new hosting service

The selected organisation will need to organise the transfer of the GDC website (including the GDC online toolkit pages) from its current hosting service to the one that EUROCITIES uses.

       III.        Green Digital Charter website maintenance and update

Throughout the duration of the project (up to end of February 2018) EUROCITIES will need ad hoc support in order to update and maintain (technical problems, incompatibilities with new versions of WordPress, etc.) the Green Digital Charter website. Moreover, in an ad hoc fashion, EUROCITIES might need the update or redesign of certain website applications or page layouts and functionalities. The latter, if asked and agreed, will be performed and charged with the same maintenance rates. If needed so, EUROCITIES will be supplying the images, photographs and texts.

       IV.        Green Digital Charter online toolkit maintenance

Throughout the duration of the project EUROCITIES will need ad hoc support in order to update and maintain the GDC online toolkit. If needed so, EUROCITIES will be supplying the images, photographs and texts.

TIMING

–       Deadline for receiving quotes: 27 April 2015

–       Notification of winning organisation and contract signature: 30 April 2015

–       Start of work related to website adaptation: beginning May 2015

–       Completion of the work related to website transfer: May 2015

–       Completion of work related to website adaptation: June 2015

–       GDC website maintenance: Ad hoc support until February 2018

–       GDC online toolkit maintenance: Ad hoc support until February 2018

SELECTION CRITERIA

The subcontracted organisation will be selected on the basis of a set of criteria:

• Willingness and ability to perform the aforementioned tasks in time and on budget

• Previous experience of developing and/or maintaining websites, databases and online toolkits

• Previous experience of working with EUROCITIES

• Reputation of the subcontractor to the European cities and smart city stakeholders

• Quality and experience of (at least one) senior expert that will supervise the aforementioned tasks

Each offer should be in EUR and should include:

• the net value of the service and the VAT value in EUR,
• the preliminary timeline for completion of work
• previous expertise in website creation and maintenance
• knowledge of the Green Digital Charter
• Short CVs of the staff working on the task

The contract will be awarded to the expert/company that provides the best offer in terms of value for money.

Interested experts/companies should be able to work to the timeline above. Information on skills and experience of the company, related to web development and management of website should be included in the offer.

The net value of provided service and the VAT value should be clearly indicated in the offer.

The experts/companies from outside Belgium should convert offers in national currency into EUR according to the rate established by the European Commission for April 2015. Please use the EC official website: http://ec.europa.eu/budget/inforeuro/index.cfm (the rate for each month is published the first working day of this month).

Furthermore, the experts/companies from outside Belgium should take into account that in case of inter-community services, the VAT is due in the country of the customer.

BUDGET

The budget available for this call is 27.000 Euros (including VAT).

OTHER NOTES

The Green Digital Charter project has a specific visual identity to which the profiles should be adhered to.

If you have any questions about this call, please contact Nikolaos Kontinakis nikolaos.kontinakis@eurocities.eu or 0032 (0)2 552 0846.

Green Digital Charter, its activities and projects that support it will be presented in a speed-networking session within the frame of EUROCITIES annual conference ‘Energising Cities’ from 5 to 8 November 2014 in Munich. In 2013, the city of Manchester presented the Charter in the Ghent annual conference.

This year, EUROCITIES secretariat will host a speed-networking session to promote the Charter, the activities that relate to and promote it and how cities can benefit from it. The session will take place on 7 November in the “speednetworking area” of the conference and cities’ politicians and practitioners are welcomed to attend and participate in the discussion.

The purpose of speednetworking session is to provide networking opportunities and give EUROCITIES members a fast, direct platform to share their knowledge and experience. The ever-popular speednetworking sessions will again be a central feature of the conference this year. 

To find out more about the EUROCITIES annual conference 2014 please visit: http://eurocities2014.eu/

This is the consecutive second year that SMARTSPACES project is presented in a speed-networking session within the frame of EUROCITIES annual conference ‘Energising Cities’ from 5 to 8 November 2014 in Munich. In 2013, SMARTSPACES was presented by Birmingham.
This year, Murcia will host a speed-networking sessions to promote its work towards the reduction of energy consumption in public buildings at SMARTSPACES project. Murcia has achieved reductions of 20% energy consumed at administrative buildings using ICT technology and focusing on involving building users. 
The session will be presented by Maria Cruz Ferreira Costa, Managing Director of Energy and Climate Change Agency, on 7 November, and will give Murcia City the opportunity to explain how the city is benefiting from its involvement in SMARTSPACES. Murcia City is involved at Covenant of Mayors and at Mayors Adapt, and one of its strategy objectives is to improve energy efficiency to reduced CO2 emissions in the municipality.
The purpose of speednetworking session is to provide networking opportunities and give EUROCITIES members a fast, direct platform to share their knowledge and experience. The ever-popular speednetworking sessions will again be a central feature of the conference this year. 
To find out more about the EUROCITIES annual conference 2014 please visit: http://eurocities2014.eu/
More information on the SMARTSPACES partners in Murcia can be found here.

The European Commission is pleased to announce a high-level conference on ICT Key Enabling Technologies at the Service of European Citizens and Cities which will be held on the 29th and 30th of October in Rome. This event is being held under the under the auspices of the Italian Presidency of the EU and will bring together a broad collection of key stakeholder groups from industry and the policy makers to the cities.

The aim of the first day is to share practical experiences and ideas about how advanced Photonics and Micro/Nanoelectronics technologies can boost the competitiveness of European industry and deliver innovative solutions to societal challenges. There will be a particular emphasis on the use of these solutions in Smart Cities and Smart Communities.

The second day will focus sharing experiences and developing strategies for accelerating the large-scale deployment of LED lighting in European cities.

You will have the opportunity to hear the views of and interact with many distinguished personalities including:

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission

Stefania Giannini, Minister of Education, University and Research of Italy

Dario Franceschini, Minister of Cultural Heritage

Claudio De Vincenti, Vice-Minister of Economic Development, Italy

Zoran Stančič, Deputy Director-General, DG Connect, European Commission

Paul Timmers, Director, Sustainable & Secure Society, DG Connect, European Commission

Khalil Rouhana, Director, Components & Systems, DG Connect, European Commission

Luigi Nicolais, President of CNR, Italy

Francesco Profumo, President, IREN, Italy

Mayors and high-level cities representatives of Albertslund, Budapest, Eindhoven, Florence, Genoa, Gothenburg, Nantes, Rome, Turin,Wuppertal

and senior representative from industry such as: EL.EN, NXP, OCLARO, OSRAM, PHILIPS, PRIMA INDUSTRIES, ST MICROELECTRONICS, ZUMTOBEL

This conference will be of particular interest to the following audience:

–       Public authorities in the Energy/Health/Industry sectors

–       Government authorities / agencies and financial institutions at European, national or regional level, cities and municipalities representatives

–       Scientists and research bodies senior managers involved in the photonics and micro/nanoeletronics fields

–       Industry and SMEs in the photonics and micro/nanoeletronics fields

Please note, if you are interested in participating, attendance is free of charge but registration is required. The limited places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. You can register at the following link http://goo.gl/FMXB1Y

For a more detailed agenda and other practical information please see here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/ict-key-enabling-technologies-service-european-citizens-and-cities-photonics-%E2%80%93-nanoelectronics-

Invitation

The SMARTSPACES projects invites you to an informal meeting covering energy efficiency using ICT, efficient operation of building and the means to successfully implement and replicate project results.

A detailed agenda and registration form can be found here.

First day

Speakers: Academic speakers from Belgrade, Istanbul and the journal ‘Energy and Buildings’ will present technological and regulatory trends. Furthermore, the eeMeasure evaluation tool will be introduced together with the ‘Guide for Replication’ planned by SMARTSPACES.

Presentations: Six projects from various programs will present their technological approach and key lessons learnt during operation or from project results. The areas cover pilot projects, IEE initiatives as well as development programs.

Workshops: Workshops will provide an open platform to discuss key phases of any energy project: Technical design, recruiting users and exploitation.
Participants willing to contribute are kindly asked to submit 2-3 slides summarising a core question or statement to start the discussion.

Second day

The second day is reserved for any form of networking. The venue will be open for exchange on bilaterally organised sessions prior or during the meeting as well as open discussion.

Registration

Participants are kindly asked to register online.

Press Release

Prague is joining the Green Digital Charter initiative by European cities with the aim of using information technology to improve the environment

This past July, Prague City Council approved the city’s accession to the EUROCITIES initiative entitled the Green Digital Charter. The ceremonial signing of the Charter took place today along with a professional seminar at the Prague Mayor’s Residence.

The Green Digital Charter (www.greendigitalcharter.eu) is an initiative by the member cities of EUROCITIES. This organisation brings together over 130 European cities and Prague has been a member since 1993. The Charter emphasises the role of cities and cooperation among them in implementing goals based on the priorities and policies of the EU in areas such as the use of information and communications technology (ICT), energy efficiency, quality of the environment and climate protection. The signatories commit to cooperate and realise activities to fulfil the goals of the Charter.

“Prague must have its own vision of which direction to head in the future while maintaining contact with other major cities in Europe and the world. Cooperation and mutual inspiration are certainly needed in the field of modern technology as well. For Prague, information technology need not only mean inherited problems that need to be dealt with, but also new challenges in how to use technology to serve the environment and save energy. These are the challenges that the other signatories of the Green Digital Charter are dealing with,” Prague Mayor Tomáš Hudeček said on the city’s decision.

Forty-two cities have joined the Charter since 2009 (e.g. Vienna, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Manchester, Helsinki, Stockholm and others). Prague City Council approved the city’s accession with Resolution No. 1783 of 29 July 2014. With its signature of the Charter, Prague is declaring its intention to take steps in pursuit of its goals. It is also confirming its ambitions to hold an important position on the international scene and its will to cooperate and share experiences with other cities.

Prague, 25 September 2014

Linked to the Smart Cities initiatives, the European Commission is encouraging the participation of city representatives in an e-mail based distribution list to collect their views on the ongoing draft methodology of ICT in Cities under ITU (International Telecommunication Union). You now have the chance your voice to be heard in something that will largely affect the environmental future of our cities!

You can find the questionnaire here.

BACKGROUND

Cities are responsible for over 70% of the Greenhouse gas emissions but at the same time they are the places where supported by ICT we can achieve most of the savings.

Europe is committed to reducing CO2 emissions to prevent dangerous climate changes and we must make sure that our growing use of ICT, which improves our lives and our productivity in so many good ways, does not endanger our planet.

Addressing environmental issues, in a city context in particular, is among the Commission priorities. In this context and among other actions the European Commission is acting as chief editor on the development of a methodology that will help cities in assessing their ICT related footprint at household, companies and city administration level as well as estimating the emissions reduction due to ICT projects at city level. This work is taking place as part of the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, activities.

As European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said: “Transparency in measuring the ICTs’ environmental effect will empower all of us, citizens, public and private organisations, to make greener choices when we buy or use digital technologies.”

The above mentioned “ICT in cities” methodology is expected to be ready by the end of 2014. The European Commission considers the viewpoint of the cities essential for the success of this initiative and therefore we are encouraging the participation of the cities in an e-mail based distribution list to collect their views on the ongoing draft methodology. Moreover, we would appreciate as many views from cities as possible on a related 15 min questionnaire.

You have now the opportunity to provide your views and input on this . Please, send us your comments by filling a relevant questionnaire that can be found here; the instructions to join the e_mail list are at the end of it.

If you need more information please don’t hesitate to contact Isabella.Maschio@ec.europa.eu or Cristobal.Irazoqui@ec.europa.eu

SMARTSPACES has been named a “Project to Watch” as an innovative energy reduction project by the United Nations’ Big Data Climate Challenge. The Big Data Climate Challenge, hosted by UN Global Pulse and the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, aims to unearth data-driven climate solutions and evidence of the economic dimensions of climate change. It is aligned with the UN Climate Summit to be held in New York on 23 September 2014, where the Secretary-General will convene world leaders from government, finance, business and civil society to catalyse climate action.

The pan-European consortium of Bristol and another 10 pilot sites in 8 countries investigates ways to reduce energy in public buildings using ICT. The project is part-funded by the European Commission’s ICT Policy Support Programme at DG Connect and coordinated by empirica.
The leading pilot Bristol is concentrating on utilising the data from the council’s smart meters (Automatic Meter Readers), which collect energy usage data for every half-an-hour from over 500 buildings across the council’s estate. Annually this results in 36.8 million bits of data; from electricity, gas, oil and renewable resources.

“Big data helps us more deeply understand how climate change can affect our economies, land, health and issues of inequality—with the ultimate aim of delivering solutions, it can empower individuals, communities and policy-makers to make more informed decisions”, says Tracy Raczek, Senior Policy Advisor on Climate in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (United Nations).
Bristol City Council’s Energy Service, in partnership with energy management software provider SystemsLink, has created a number of user-friendly tools which convert this data into simple information and images and therefore provide greatly enhanced energy reduction.

• Profile Reports – To identify energy wastage and potential energy efficiency projects
• Invoice Reports – For budgeting and bench-marking
• Green Finger Reports – For staff engagement
• Profile Alarms – For next-day notifications
• Web Portal and Dashboard – For 24/7 up-to-date information

The wide range of tools available means that they are appropriate for by a variety of users: including building professionals, accountants, facilities management, caretakers and general staff. Their use has been piloted across in 11 municipalities for nearly a year: already resulting in energy savings in some buildings of up to 20%. Service providers across all pilots, mostly SMEs, will launch commercial products and the Energy departments and Councils will offer energy services.
SMARTSPACES will release a ‘Guide’ for replicating ICT energy services in public buildings and social housing next year. The ‘Guide for Replication’ will incorporate lessons learnt in the residential projects eSESH and BECA.

George Ferguson, Mayor of the leading pilot Bristol says: “This award is yet another example of the international recognition that Bristol is gaining for sustainability and green innovation, as we lead up to our year as European Green Capital in 2015. I will be at the UN Climate Summit in September and look forward to the opportunity of promoting this and other Bristol environmental initiatives at a world forum.”

For more information on the UN Climate Summit, visit www.un.org/climatechange/summit/.

To learn about the Big Data Climate Challenge and UN Global Pulse, visit www.unglobalpulse.org/big-data-climate.

For more information on SMARTSPACES, visit www.smartspaces.eu or contact smartspaces(at)empirica(dot)com.

Sustainable Places 2014 builds on the successful “ICT for Sustainable Places” conference held in Nice in September 2013.

It will focus on energy efficiency at building, district and city levels. The event will be composed of:

• the 2nd EC DG CONNECT workshop on eeBuilding Key Performance Indicators
• the EuropIA.14 colloquia on Architecture and City Design
• presentations & workshops on innovative business models, technologies, modeling and monitoring for sustainable buildings, districts and cities

Sustainable Places 2014 will enable to access up-to-date information, assess outcomes from the most advanced research & innovation projects, discuss possible synergies, and envision possible standards evolution.

It will be a key opportunity for delegates to meet and network with high quality keynote speakers from CSTB, CEA, Arup, Intel and CalCon), as well as with architects, building designers, energy consultants, urban planners, etc.  An attendance of around 200 participants, coming from Europe and other regions of the world, is projected. Register and benefit from the Early Bird rate at: http://sustainable-places.eu/registration/

The Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) has announced the organisation of a public conference on Innovative financing for energy efficiency and renewables in Brussels on 8 October 2014.

Up-scaling investments in energy efficiency and renewables is a major challenge to meet the European Union’s energy targets for 2020. Lack of public resources requires new approaches to investment. Local and regional authorities have a key role to play in mobilising stakeholders, developing a project pipeline and creating the business case for attracting private investment.

This shift to innovative financing approaches is supported by the European Union’s Intelligent Energy Europe and Horizon 2020 programmes.

This conference will focus on the detailed presentation of 8 successful projects across Europe, which are developing new ways to set up and finance investments in public buildings, street lighting and housing.

Local and regional authorities will have the opportunity to learn how to concretely implement similar approaches in their own territories.

Interpretation will be provided in EN, IT and ES

REGISTER HERE

Programme

The fourth and last Networking intelligent Cities for Energy Efficiency (NiCE) study tour was hosted by Linkoping on 9 May 2014. Visitors from three Green Digital Charter signatory cities learnt about the projects that Linkoping is designing and carrying out to fulfil its GDC commitments and how Linkoping helped in the development and testing of the NiCE ICT carbon footprint measurement tool. Presentations by the ICT department and companies that work together with the city, site visits and peer-to-peer discussions were organised to project sites and venues around the city.

Study tours fall under the second area of action of the NiCE project: exchange and learning activities. They are knowledge transfer schemes that allow site visitors to interact with local stakeholders and see how projects are implemented in reality. NiCE has developed a study tour catalogue with information for hosts and visitors.

Presentations:

Measuring ICT carbon footprint

ICT carbon footprint tool

SAAB – technologies for the attractive city

To look at the study tour programme, click here. For more information and links to the Study Tour Catalogue: http://bit.ly/18BT7M1

More pictures follow:

The third Networking intelligent Cities for Energy Efficiency (NiCE) study tour was hosted by Murcia on 5-6 May 2014. Visitors from six Green Digital Charter signatory cities learnt about the projects that Murcia is carrying out to fulfil its GDC commitments. Presentations by the various city departments that use ICT for energy efficiency, site visits and peer-to-peer discussions were organised to various project sites and venues around the city.

Study tours fall under the second area of action of the NiCE project: exchange and learning activities. They are knowledge transfer schemes that allow site visitors to interact with local stakeholders and see how projects are implemented in reality. NiCE has developed a study tour catalogue with information for hosts and visitors.

Presentations:

Introduction to Murcia study tour

Smart water in Murcia

New municipal ICT management model: part1, part2, part3

SMARTSPACES project in Murcia

ICT on public bicycle / Green line Murcia / WiFi public network

ICT for tourism promotion in Murcia

Noise control in smart cities – Murcia

Murcia Roadmap

To look at the study tour programme, click here. For more information and links to the Study Tour Catalogue: http://bit.ly/18BT7M1

More pictures follow:

European Commission DG CONNECT, together with DG ENERGY and DG MOVE, has published a series of videos launching an ‘invitation for commitment’ under the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Smart Cities and Communities. The deadline for submissions is 15 June 2014.

The invitation for commitment is open for both existing initiatives as well as ambitious plans for the future in the fields of energy, transport, and information and communication technologies. The aim is to share ideas and plans for actions between different stakeholders, as well as to take forward and support the objectives set out in the EIP on Smart Cities and Communities: to accelerate full scale deployment of smart city solutions. It should help promote smart city actions across the EU and generate further scale and replication.

Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, mayor of Warsaw and EUROCITIES president, participates in the high level group (HLG) on the EIP, both as her city’s mayor and as our president. We also participate in the ‘sherpa’ group, composed of representatives of the HLG members, city representatives, industry, universities and research organisations, supporting the HLG in its work. The group was extended to include additional cities in December 2013, and continues its work in 2014 following up on the call for commitments and ensuring links with the Stakeholder Platform for Smart Cities and Communities.

In particular, members of European networks such as the Green Digital Charter, the Covenant of Mayors, the Stakeholder Platform on Smart Cities and Communities, and CIVITAS, are encouraged to consider this invitation. The deadline for submitting commitments is 15 June 2014. Please note that there is no EU funding related to the call for commitments.

More info on the invitation for commitment is available here. You can watch the videos below or on the EIP Smart Cities and Communities Youtube page, here.

At the kind invitation from the Municipality of the Genoa, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is organizing a series of events concentrated on prominent theme of “Smart Sustainable Cities”.

Cities are at the same time drivers of social and economic development, as well as responsible for resources consumption and pollution. Furthermore, the rising global urban population is intensifying environmental pressure and social and economic challenges.

ICT can play a significant role in fostering livability in cities, enabling us to live more sustainably. Urban infrastructure and services that rely on ICT-integrated solutions can enhance sustainable lifestyles, foster a more intelligent and profitable use of resources and promote social justice.

ICT can make the change happen. This is why it matters how we use it.

These events intend to bring together leading specialists in the field, from top policy-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, academia, standards experts and others to raise awareness on the role of ICTs to build the cities we want.

Event Overview

17-18 June 2014 (morning): Event “TRANSFORM”
18 June 2014 (afternoon): Forum on “The city we want: smart and  sustainable”
19-20 June 2014: Fifth meeting of the Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities (FG-SSC)

Contacts

Draft programmes, practical information and online registration for the events is available on the ITU website at:

http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/Pages/2014/IT-2014.aspx

For more information contact Ms Cristina Bueti at: greenstandard@itu.int

We are glad to announce the Green Digital Charter Awards for 2013 which aim to promote and showcase the cities and projects that are contributing to a more green digital future.

Green Digital Charter (GDC) aspires to create a networking space for cities to be able to showcase and exchange projects, tools and best examples that help combine ICT and energy efficiency. A second important objective is to help cities benchmark, monitor and report their progress towards a green digital future. To this end, through FP7-NiCE project, the GDC toolkit was created (http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/toolkit/gdctoolkit_Home.php) and all signatory cities have been asked to:

• Describe tools that they have used and projects that they have designed or implemented
• Assess their own progress
• Measure their ICT direct carbon footprint

In order to further motivate cities use the toolkit and share knowledge with other signatories a Green Digital Charter Awards for 2013 scheme has been prepared and announced. For more information you can look at the Call for awards document, Rules & eligibility document or the Awards entry form to be completed and sent.

In an effort to present in an easier and quicker way the Green Digital Charter, its objectives and benefits for the signatory cities, a small number of infographics will be developed in the next weeks.

The first infographic released “Green Digital Charter… in a nutshell” explains the key facts and ideas behind this important initiative.

You can find the first infographic here: in http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/greendigitalcharter/infographicstest

In an effort to present the Green Digital Charter (GDC) in a more comprehensive way and give the floor to cities that have already signed it,  a set of 5 short videos has been released and can be watched through the home page of the GDC website (http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/).

The first four short videos answer to simple questions about the Green Digital Charter:

1. Why sign the GDC?
2. What are your city’s ambitions in relation to the GDC?
3. What projects is your city undertaking?
4. What is your advice for cities that begin with the Green Digital Agenda?

The fifth short video is dedicated to the signing of the GDC along with the Covenant of Mayors  by the Mayor of Vilnius. The event that took place in EUROCITIES premises on 1st July in the presence of representatives from DG CONNECT and DG ENER.

The mayor of Vilnius has marked the start of Lithuania’s EU presidency by making two important commitments in the city’s fight against climate change

Artūras Zuokas, mayor of EUROCITIES member Vilnius, marked the launch of Lithuania’s EU presidency by signing both the Covenant of Mayors and our Green Digital Charter in our office in the presence of European Commission officials on 1 July 2013.

Vilnius is the 24th EU capital and one of nearly 5,000 European cities to have joined the Covenant of Mayors initiative, through which signatories commit to reducing carbon emissions by at least 20% by 2020, and the 37th city to sign up to our Green Digital Charter, which sees cities commit to improving energy efficiency through the uptake of smart ICTs.

Colette Maloney, head of unit at European Commission DG CONNECT, welcomed the new signatory city by saying: “Vilnius is certainly on the right track and is definitely a shining example of the EU smart cities initiative. I am convinced that your innovative ideas can inspire other European cities”.

Find out more about the Covenant of Mayors and the Green Digital Charter.

On Thursday 23 April, NiCE project organised the third “reference cities group” meeting in Manchester, UK to demonstrate the draft version of the Green Digital Charter reporting tools and ask for the cities’ feedback.

Fredrik Eriksson from Linkoping presented how he has used the draft ICT carbon footprint tool to assess the direct CO₂ emissions from the ICT equipment of the city administration. The main outcome was that, during the last 5 years, even though the city has almost doubled the count of electronic devices that it uses, it has managed to half the respective direct CO₂ emissions it produces.

The public version of the Green Digital Charter toolkit will be released by the end of June 2013 and will be accompanied by instructions on how to use and efficiently report your city’s outcomes and savings.

To see the draft toolkit: http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/toolkit/gdctoolkit_Home.php

For more information regarding the Green Digital Charter, visit http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/ or email nikolaos.kontinakis@eurocities.eu.

Oulu became the 36th signatory of our Green Digital Charter, committing to tackling climate change through smart ICT

Matti Pennanen, mayor of Oulu, signed our Green Digital Charter during our knowledge society forum (KSF) summer meeting in Oulu on 17-19 June 2013.

By signing our Green Digital Charter, cities commit to work together to reach the EU climate goals through knowledge and experience sharing and ICT. It promotes progress in tackling climate change through technological innovation.

Oulu became the 36th signatory of the charter.

At the conference of the forum, Oulu explained that they are an ‘Arctic Smart city’. The city is focusing both on the industrial developments and climate challenges of the northern hemisphere. By committing to our Green Digital Charter, Oulu is making a sustainable contribution to the economic and technological demands of the artic region.

Visit www.greendigitalcharter.eu to find out more about our Green Digital Charter and our NiCE project, which supports the charter’s goals and implementation.

In its objective to support the Green Digital Charter, NiCE project has participated in the speednetworking sessions of EUROCITIES cooperation platform 2013. The platform sessions took take place in Espoo, Finland at 16-17 May 2013 and focused on the Green Digital Charter and its benefit for signatory cities as well as the ways that NiCE will help them to implement their Charter commitments.

For more information regarding the Green Digital Charter, visit http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/ or email nikolaos.kontinakis@eurocities.eu.

On Tuesday 26 March the Mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé, signed the Green Digital Charter making the city of Bordeaux the 35^th signatory of this important European initiative. The signing took place, in the presence of Ms Elena Pedone, EC/DG Connect, at the end of the conference “does the digital make cities smarter?”, one of the many “Digital Week” activities that Bordeaux organised between 25 and 31 March.

Mr. Juppé, at his signing speech, emphasised that Green Digital Charter stands at the crossroads of the commitments taken under Bordeaux Agenda 21 and the Programme Bordeaux Digital City. He stressed that, as scientists predict that the southwest of France will be one of the regions that climate change will affect the most, the city’s officials, staff and citizens must engage and improve their energy behaviour. To this end, he explained, the city has already started to implement solutions of smart metering and energy control with the ambitious targets of reducing by 50% its buildings energy consumption and, thus, saving up to 8 M € per year.

Digital week event: http://citedigitale.bordeaux.fr/

For more information regarding the Green Digital Charter, visit http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu/ or email info@greendigitalcharter.eu.

The 2nd NiCE roadshow took place in Nuremberg on 14 March 2013. The event focused on financing and policy for smart and sustainable cities. Speakers included Mr Phillip Barth from the European Commission (DG CONNECT) who gave members an update on Horizon 2020 and the Smart Cities initiative. Participants heard from city speakers on national and EU funding, as well as city examples on innovative financing mechanisms for smart cities.

The plenary session also included a political discussion involving the vice chair of the KSF- Councillor Nigel Murphy(Manchester), Chair of the Environment Forum-  Councillor James McKay (Birmingham), Vice Chair of the Environment Forum and Deputy Mayor of Nice Veronique Paquis, Milan Obradovic (Malmö), Ronan Dantec (Nantes) and Peter Pluschke from the host city Nuremberg.

Study visits also focused on Nuremberg’s implementation of the Green Digital Charter.

Read more: Green Digital roadshows – bit.ly/NLuhdh