Category: Cities

+CityxChange and other H2020 Smart City projects related to the Positive Energy District (PED) concept, were part of the EUSEW webinar ‘Creating a Joint Vision for PEDs’. PEDs (Positive Energy Districts) are an important concept in both the EC’s Smart Cities & Communities (SCC) programmes and the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET plan). In the EC’s SCC Lighthouse programme, which has set PEDs as a formal standard in its recent calls, over 420 Million Euro are invested in 47 Lighthouse Cities and 67 Fellow Cities.

Two main lines of action are currently ongoing in this context: the refinement of the PED definition in order to arrive at a commonly accepted standard for PED implementation and the building of PEDs in on-the-ground projects such as under the EC SCC Lighthouse scheme. Given the current developments, a third factor is brought into the discussion: How can PEDs contribute to increased robustness against shocks and at the same time present specific opportunities for post-COVID recovery (Green Deal)?

Session Agenda:

• Pitch 1: Definitions and approaches: an overview – Han Vandevyvere, SCIS consortium (Vito)
• Pitch 2: The PED Framework – a joint PED vision – Christoph Gollner, FFG (Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH)
• Pitch 3: Challenges of the local context – Rudy Rooth, Atelier Local Coordinator Amsterdam (DNVGL)
• Pitch 4: Reality check in current EIP SCC Lighthouse Cities – 2 field cases +CityxChange, Powel  and  MAKING-CITY, Oulu (Marit Teigen Myrstad +CityxChange, Samuli Rinne MAKING-CITY)
• Discussion 1: Elaborating on the PED definition and certification work, feedback to the SET plan
• Discussion 2: Addressing challenges and barriers to building PEDs on the ground: recommendations, next steps, feedback to the related EU policy and regulatory frameworks
• Wrap up: Reporting from the discussion groups

During their presentation, Marit Teigen Myrstad (Trondheim Municipality) and Klaus Livik (Powel) provided territorial-grounded insights from our project. They focused on regulations of the energy market and how these barriers could be overcome in order to become PED enablers. Interesting conclusion were drawn from the second discussion round , ‘Addressing challenges and barriers to building PEDs on the ground: recommendations, next steps, feedback to the related EU policy and regulatory frameworks’, where +CityxChange representatives were moderators in. ‘The discussion group addressed among others:

• The importance of experimenting regulations in current EU projects, the circumstance that the economic incentive is not in place for building owners – who expect a much more simplified regulation which they could understand and make use of – as the most urgent regulatory bottlenecks that need to be overcome to speed up the development of PEDs.
• The need for PED supporting regulation and policy is clear, but current ongoing regulation work would need more coordination and time. However, it is challenging to address all the policy making processes in an integrated and holistic manner.
• Some investors don’t see the long-term benefits of investing in PEDs. Therefore, regulation plays a very important role and could help to overcome this. Based on the feedback from the EIP-SCC matchmaking event, quite some investors are interested in making long term investments on infrastructures, PEDs included. In addition, both regulation and new innovative financing mechanisms and procurement are considered important in facilitating the breakthrough of PEDs.’

All in all, the sessions were designed to give an in-depth understanding of what the current challenges to build PEDs are, and brainstorm on possible actions and recommendations on future developments. The main target stakeholders were those involved in PED development, but also representatives from local authorities which could get more insights on their future policy developments.

Read the full recap of the Webinar here. 

Find the recording of the Webinar here.

+CityxChange‘s forth newsletter has been distributed in July 2020. Please feel welcome to read the newsletter online here and distribute it to your network. This month’s newsletter contains the most important news and updates of the last three months from our project. During the last months it has been necessary – not only for us, but all over the world – to reshape our activities and how we are delivering our project results and solutions. The COVID-19 crisis has changed the way how we have interacted within our consortium and not only. You can read more about how us and other SCC01 projects have been tackling the challenge. 

Further, we want to invite you to subscribe to the newsletters to not miss any project updates:

On 21 of January 2020, our partners, IOTA, presented their solutions and references +CityxChange in the workshop organised by the European Commission, namely DG CNECT and DG ENER,  on Data Driven Energy Services – how to engage consumers. The aim of the workshop was to explore what is happening at household level in the field of energy services. More specifically, the workshop aimed at showcasing the experiences of H2020 projects and their approach to the GDPR requirements; understanding how to engage consumers in the new energy solutions, hearing the views of the Energy Communities on the possibilities opened by the Clean Energy Package, and the role played by IT companies compared to the energy companies in providing these services. 

With 120 people attending and a fully booked room, the event gathered an audience consisting of representatives of DSOs, Energy communities, consumers associations, EU funded projects trialling consumers engagement in energy services as well as commercial platforms providing digitalised energy services. In three sessions, experiences gained by these actors were discussed, identifying challenges and opportunities concerning consumers’ engagement in data driven energy services.
The workshop confirmed important trends such as digitalisation changing the way energy market players are interacting with consumers. In this context, novel business models should be developed to engage customers in the wide energy market promoting a consumer-oriented framework that provide monetary rewards (without excluding non-monetary such as green behavior) for value provided to the system, and help build an online community of like-minded actors in order to increase the use of renewable resources in the energy mix.

Despite all the efforts, it was recognised that for the time being we are not managing to engage consumers in a big enough scale and beyond the initial phase of interest. What was common to those who have succeeded at engaging consumers (be it R&I projects or commercially viable start-ups) was the fact of thinking, from the beginning, what does the consumer want. In this context, should we reformulate the question “which kind of data do we need?” to “which kind of data can we collect according to the GDPR”? In the context of the energy transition, the new role of a DSO as a system integrator was emphasized. In addition, a second level of the energy transition was strongly highlighted: the construction of a data layer or framework covering the handling, processing and governance of all energy-related data.Participants requested future programmes of the European Commission to support data platforms and recognized the need to support a cross-sector approach, especially mobility, energy and urban environments to reach the Green Deal objectives.

The European Commission has taken note of these messages. They will be considered as input in the preparation of the coming Horizon Europe calls, and they will feed in relevant policy discussions on both Green Deal and Europe Fit for the Digital Age.
Finally, linked to this workshop and within the series of Open Energy Marketplaces and services events that took place during the last year and a half AIOTI, ENTSO-E and EIT InnoEnergy are preparing a POV that addresses topics raised and discussed during the workshops such as the following:

• What are the gaps, scale-up needs and the state of the play of the enabling technologies
• What is an open energy market place and how regulation could support the development of such a concept into reality?

Download the report for a detailed account of the event. 

Download the presentation from IOTA to learn more on their solutions and +CityxChange.