Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CityxChange (Positive City ExChange)

Teaser

In order to have livable and functioning cities, municipalities must improve how they engage with technologies and citizens. A smart city will use digital technologies to enhance performance and well being, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to engage more...

Summary

In order to have livable and functioning cities, municipalities must improve how they engage with technologies and citizens. A smart city will use digital technologies to enhance performance and well being, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. All this could be reached within an open innovation model.

In the +CityxChange project,which NTNU is coordinating and includes 32 partners whereof 7 cities, large-scale industry, SMEs, NGOs, and academia, are working to showcase how digital technologies can be exploited to improve quality of life, make cities more climate-friendly and productive, and facilitate business development. Trondheim Kommune (TK) and Limerick City and County Council (LCCC) as Lighthouse Cities together with Alba Iulia (MAI), Písek (MP), Sestao (SB), Smolyan (SMO, and Võru (VORU) as Follower Cities will develop feasible and realistic demonstration projects in climate-friendly and sustainable urban environments.

+CityxChange will create solutions for Positive Energy Blocks leading to Positive Energy Districts and Cities through (i) decision support tools which enable informed decisions to be made by all stakeholders in the community, (ii) an approach to creating a Positive Energy Block through energy reduction and efficiency measures, local renewable, local storage, flexibility and peer-to-peer energy trading and (iii) top-down community engagement driven by the local authority and bottom-up citizen engagement to inform, educate and drive behavioral change.

The +CityxChange vision is to co-create the future we want to live in. To achieve this, the following framework is being adopted:
(i) Prototype the Future – Integrated Planning and Design
(ii) Enable the Future – Creation of a Common Energy Market
(iii) Accelerate the Future – CommunityxChange

This framework will incorporate 11 Demonstration Projects which will be carried out in the Lighthouse Cities and replicated in the Follower Cities. These projects encompass the environmental, spatial, social, technical, economic, regulatory and legal aspects required to deliver Positive Energy Blocks/Districts (PEB/D). They enable scale-up and replication of PEB/Ds across cities and across the EU.

The 11 Demonstration Projects have the following objectives:
- Collecting data and providing integrated decision support to the cities (DP01, Model)
- Co-creating a Bold City Vision to plan, implement, replicate and scale-up to positive Energy Districts and Cities (DP02, Vision)
- Co-creating Distributed Positive Energy Blocks through citizen participation (DP03, Engage)
- Enabling innovation through regulation mechanisms (DP04, Regulatory Zone);
- Accelerating change and disruptive solutions through innovation playgrounds (DP05, Playground)
- Creating DPEBs through improved energy performance and integration with the energy system (DP06, DPEB)
- Creating the +CityxChange approach to community grids (DP07, Microgrids)
- Integrating seamless eMobility within the DPEB (DP08, eMaaS)
- Enabling local energy trading within the DPEB (DP09, Local Trading)
- Enabling a fair deal to all consumers through a local flexibility market (DP10, Flexibility Market)
- Enabling public and private stakeholders to invest in their buildings (DP11, Sustainable Investments)

Work performed

The project has successfully completed its first year with progress in the development phase and setting up detailed preparations for the deployment phases, with initial efforts towards implementation well underway.

Key results and key frameworks have been developed during this first year:

The Bold City Vision strategic framework is completed and the BCV is being integrated into ongoing work in all cities.
The Regulatory Mechanisms Framework has been completed, describing the regulatory challenges and guidelines to work with them.
Regulators for the Lighthouse Cities have shown strong interest and are part of project communication.
The Citizen Observatories are developing, with a first one opened and others being linked with ongoing strategies and project sites.
Citizen and Stakeholder Engagement activities are taking place in all Lighthouse Cities, including joint Climathom participation by Limerick and Trondheim.
A detailed operational PEB definition is developed.
Building owners are being integrated into the PEB development work and the market places.
Investment models and approaches for PEB development and replication have been structured.
The Follower Cities are detailing feasibility studies for local PEBs.
Market and Flexibility Models on energy in the PEBs are being built.
A PEB modeling tool is under development and testing with the cities.
The project KPI Framework has been finalized and the Monitoring & Evaluation tool is available as a prototype.
Initial replication and spin-off projects are already starting, or are under application.
The outcomes that are formal project Deliverables are published on the project website: https://cityxchange.eu/knowledge-base/

Final results

+CityxChange will develop and deploy Positive Energy Blocks and Districts (PEBs/PEDs) throughout Europe. It will contribute to the European Energy Transition and break it down to the local level. It will enable local stakeholders and citizens to participate in this transition. Societal impact will be achieved through an upgrade of the energy system in a locally adapted way, improving local grids, integrating citizens in the transition, and allowing for the development of livable cities. The project follows an open innovation approach with distributed and loosely coupled solutions to increase collaboration and applicability.

Modeling: +CityxChange will combine existing software platforms, i.e. building simulations, simulation of energy consumption and production for grid infrastructure, mobility patterns and EV charging points and monitoring the ‘soft’ impacts of the citizens. This provides novel decision support for the creation of a PEB.

Energy: The project will exploit PEB-related new market opportunities to determine and plan effective design, upgrades and grid management activities, while encouraging cross network and market inter-connectivity. It will increase competitiveness of industrial partners, while demonstrating societal impacts including the delivery of secure, cleaner energy, while reducing grid infrastructure investment costs.

Investment: Business models for PEBs will enable stakeholders such as public authorities, private investors, home-owners, and local communities, in large-scale PEB projects to develop business models tailored to their local circumstances, and which capture multiple dimensions of value: financial, social, environmental and amenity. The approach has been developed to enable citizens to invest in their own buildings and provides them with the incentives (social, economical, legal and technical) to do so.

CommunityxChange: The +CityxChange process will enable deeper engagement and broad stakeholder involvement. New technologies and digital tools, urban prototyping, and citizen observatories will go hand in hand to ensure an open process around adaptive governance, integrating universities, local authorities, and communities and neighborhoods.

Website & more info

More info: https://cityxchange.eu/.