In 2018, through the European ESMARTCITY project, Capenergies is committed to building the city of tomorrow. This was the start of a 2-year experiment designed to test the impact and use of energy efficiency technologies as a lever for green growth and territorial resilience in cities in 6 Euro-Mediterranean countries. In July 2020, the closing event brought together more than a hundred Smart City players from all over Europe, providing an opportunity to look back at the collective learning from ESMARTCITY.
ESMARTCITY: Accelerating the energy transition in the city of tomorrow
By 2050, 2/3 of the world's population will live in cities, consuming more than 70 % of the world's energy and emitting just as much greenhouse gas. It is therefore becoming imperative to rethink the city in order to preserve natural resources, the environment and the quality of life of its inhabitants, even in the context of a pandemic. The Smart City - a sustainable, intelligent city based on innovative technologies that benefit citizens and the community as a whole - is a priority response to the increasing urbanisation of our territories and to less-than-optimised urban management methods.
While projects are emerging all over the world, France must also prepare the future of its cities. To meet these new needs, in parallel with the actions undertaken as part of the FLEXGRIDCapenergies has decided to join the European ESMARTCITY project to support cooperation between French Smart City cities and companies, promoting the development of smarter, more sustainable Mediterranean cities. In practical terms, the experiments consisted of testing technologies and services to increase the energy efficiency of buildings and public lighting in 6 European countries in the Mediterranean: Greece, Spain, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Portugal and France.
Buildings are the primary building blocks of cities. By refurbishing and modernising them using Smart City technologies, they can be made more energy-efficient, faster and cheaper to manage and provide services. Schools, offices, stadiums, swimming pools and libraries have been transformed into living laboratories that integrate the user experience and exploit the surrounding intelligence (multi-sensors) for a total budget of almost €78,000, amortised in less than 4 years.
In the same way, by investing nearly €68,000 in intelligent LED lighting combined with presence and luminosity sensors, enabling, for example, the intensity of light to be varied according to the time of day, for the benefit of the town and its residents, over 60% in energy savings have been achieved at 4 pilot sites. With more than 260 million street lamps worldwide, street lighting is the nerve system of towns and cities, and there are many opportunities to optimise and modernise it, in particular by integrating intelligent mobility systems or pollution sensors.
The Smart City: opportunities for businesses and local authorities
Capenergies has taken the full measure of its network's needs in order to create the conditions necessary for the implementation of the Smart City in the region and encourage the deployment of innovative technologies. A number of collective intelligence workshops were organised with companies and then with local and regional authorities in order to match innovative offerings with local needs. Public procurement represents an important economic lever, enabling the deployment of new solutions to be accelerated. To achieve this, the criteria for awarding contracts need to be rethought in favour of greener, more sustainable solutions or products.
The Smart City market will be worth over €400 billion by 2027 (source: Grand View Research Inc). The digitisation of public services, data processing, sustainable mobility, energy efficiency of equipment and buildings, and the opening up of data are all areas that will be strongly supported in the coming years. Despite the current crisis, this momentum is continuing, the quest for sustainability and resilience remains fundamental to the adaptation of regions and the management of climate change.
As the ESMARTCITY project draws to a close, the European Commission has decided to support 100 European cities in the low-carbon development and digitalisation of their businesses through the Intelligent City Challenge (ICC). In France, 8 cities have been selected, including 2 in the southern region: Nice, as mentor city, and Aix-en-Provence.
In 2021, Capenergies will continue its action by supporting Smart City players and the deployment of structuring projects.
