Europe looks for smarter cities
A new European initiative has been set up to help drive innovation in cities, but will governments listen to its proposals?
A new European initiative has been set up to help drive innovation in cities, but will governments listen to its proposals?
Creating technologically advanced, smarter cities is something that many rapidly growing emerging countries are pushing ahead with. However, with populous cities throughout Europe that have grown over the course of centuries, it is harder to integrate new transport, energy and environmental systems without causing major disruption.
The European Commission wants to change this, and has set up the Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership (SCC) to help finance projects that will help address the problems of pollution, congestion and energy efficient buildings.
The idea is that research will be brought together to help develop projects that will demonstrate to cities how they can improve their infrastructure. Currently, many cities and businesses are reluctant to invest in innovative projects that may cut costs in the long-run, but would require significant initial investment. To help speed things along, EU funds of €365m have been set aside for the initiative in 2013, a massive increase from the €81m for this year.
Gunther Oettinger, the EU’s Energy Commissioner, said: “Innovation drives Europe’s competitiveness and is the best means of addressing energy efficiency. Thanks to this partnership, high efficiency heating and cooling systems, smart metering, real-time energy management, or zero-energy buildings, neighbourhood solutions will spread among more and more European cities.”
Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas added: “Transport is the lifeblood of every city for people and business. But Europe’s cities suffer most from road accidents, congestion, poor air quality and noise. We need to drive forwards the research and innovation that can bring us to our goals of CO2 free cities, phasing out conventionally fuelled cars from city centres, to smart charging of electric vehicles and smokeless silent buses.”
The need to restructure many cities’ infrastructure is important, with pollution and congestion creating inefficient and costly places for people to live. However, persuading governments to invest in this innovation will be hard, particularly at a time of such financial difficulty and short-term politics.
