Urban Reverb: Sustainable Partnerships in Focus

Anthony Colclough: Hello, and welcome to Urban Reverb, the official podcast of the Smart Cities Marketplace, a European initiative financed by the European Commission. I'm Anthony Colclough. They say the average human can manage to focus for about 8.25 seconds at a time. I have a distinct feeling that it may take longer than that to generate the sustainable local solutions we need to build climate-neutral and resilient cities across Europe.

We're well over eight seconds now. Do I still have your attention? …Hello? Over the next 20 minutes, I hope to keep you focused on the Smart Cities Marketplace Focus and Discussion Groups, thematic forums in which cities, businesses, and other stakeholders zero-in on shared sustainability priorities.

As Trevor will tell us, these aren't just talking shops where partners discuss lifeboats as the ship sinks. But starting points for lasting, action-oriented partnerships that might even help us to get our boat floating again. At present there are four groups, and we've squeezed three of them in today. There are plans to continue developing more groups, and who knows, by the end of this podcast maybe you'll even have an idea for one yourself. By the end, maybe you'll even have an idea for your own one.

Still with me? Great. Then let's hear from Sergio, Trevor, Julen, and Laura. 

Sergio Olivero: My name is Sergio Olivero Olivero. I am the head of the Business and Finance Innovation Department at the Energy Center of the Technical University of Torino. And I'm also coordinating the Deep Retrofitting Focus Group organized by the Smart Cities Marketplace of the European Commission.

Trevor Gibson: My name's Trevor Gibson. I'm based in the UK, as you can probably tell from my accent. I chair the newly created Small Giants focus group. My background is primarily in working in small cities for many decades.

Julen Imana: My name is Julen Imana and I'm working for ICLEI Europe, which is an international network of cities. And I'm currently the chair of the Renewable Heating and Cooling Focus Group of the Smart Cities Marketplace.

Laura Junasová: My name is Laura Junasová. I work at Euro Heat and Power, which is the international network for district energy, promoting sustainable heating and cooling. And Euro Heat and Power is also part of the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling.

My role is to act as a liaison between the platform and the Focus Group in order to support the activities of this initiative. And Euro Heat and Power is also currently co-chairing this Focus Group.

Anthony Colclough: Each Focus and Discussion Group has chosen a topic where its members believe that teaming up could lead to rapid and sustainable impact, triggering a local change that sends positive ripples across the European marketplace. 

Sergio Olivero: Well, building stock is responsible for around 40 percent of the energy consumption and also for 40 percent of the CO2 emissions in a city. Please be aware that the existing buildings are subject to strong obsolescence at European level. So, we can say that the energy efficiency or we should say ‘inefficiency’ is a major challenge for energy savings and climate targets. It is also a great opportunity for, local economies.

So, deep retrofit solutions could serve as a solution to address environmental and also energy needs. At the same time, in the, so-called Clean Energy Package, the European Commission issued two directives, the 2018-2001, also known as RED two and, the 944 in 2019, that paved the way to the so-called Renewable Energy Communities and Citizen Energy Communities, putting the citizen at the center of energy transition. So, on one side, we have making building more efficient in order to use less energy. At the same time, we, aim at the electrification of thermal loads.

Laura Junasová: Municipally owned heating and cooling systems frequently come across constraints in accessing sufficient investment funds and adopting new technologies, and public private partnerships offer a potential solution to unlock these resources, although they also present challenges that must be addressed.

Julen Imana: Renewables and district heating, particularly bring an opportunity to cities and an opportunity for citizens to have an easier access to renewable energy in the heating sector.

The challenge, then, I think it's not the citizens’ acceptance because I think most times it comes well accepted, unless it comes with an increased energy price, of course, which can be then tackled by initiatives like energy communities, which can keep the prices low. The main challenges are available sources. And then one of the, I think, very good solutions is to look into waste heat from industries in the area that are usually not taken into account, or not benefited from, and can make us actually obtain a very renewable energy source because it's fuel free and keeps prices low because it's super local and an energy source that we just have there.

Trevor Gibson: ‘Small Giants’ is a phrase that came about many, many years ago now. And people often ask, you know, what does it mean? Small cities largely have a tough time of it. They often lack financial resources. They often lack just people on seats. And therefore, they don't have experts in all of these fields. Because they're small, they're often less attractive to the market, to the big players. It's about that desire, that commitment to collaboration to further their aims around themes of common interest with other cities.

One in the past has been around the humble lamppost to basically aggregate demand about an ever-present thing in cities of all sizes. We'll also be looking at mobility islands. Circular cities seems to be a common theme of interest, perhaps as a one mechanism of achieving net zero. We have connections with a number of companies who specialize in societal engagement too in this. Because to move forward on anything, whether it be net zero or a lamppost, really, you need to engage with the citizens and get their views, their buy in. 

Anthony Colclough: So, we have a clear picture of the topics that are fueling our groups. But what is it like to be part of them? Are they whizzing around the globe, presenting grand ideas in business boardrooms? Sweating out their ideas in squash courts? Or taking Zoom calls in the shower? Who gets invited to the table? And just what are they hoping to achieve?

Sergio Olivero: The second half of last year, I was appointed the coordinator of the group and I launched the idea of linking, electrification of thermal loads with building retrofitting and energy communities.

The group is composed by a series of stakeholders. And the idea is to share views, but especially to diffuse the knowledge that is being created in Italy that is acting as a living lab on energy communities, and on electrification of thermal loads.

So the idea is to transform the focus group into the catalyst of a process of diffusion of such knowledge. For example, the focus group participated in the Smart City Expo in Barcelona. The meetings are also online so that they will be joinable by people and organizations in other European countries.

The focus group, today, shows great attractiveness for, building companies, ICT, IOT, artificial intelligence providers, and for storage providers. There are several small and medium sized cities. And then also some energy associations are asking to join. 

Historically, those working in the building sector did not deal with ICT, did not deal with energy. And those working in energy transmission, energy distribution, did not have any contact with building owners. Now, this process ignited by the European Commission is clustering different views, and, practically speaking, using also money made available by the incentivization schemes.

Trevor Gibson: By way of background, the Small Giants is an informal grouping of small-to-medium-sized cities across Europe, which for a number of years now has come together, led by myself and a colleague, Graham Colclough.

What the Focus Group through the Smart Cities Marketplace is enabling us to do is really raise the profile to bring in the expertise and the connections with the marketplace to really push on with the initiative and hopefully bring about very important collaborations between cities and between cities and the market. 

We're going to test out themes of common interest, the areas where cities are focused but are finding it challenging to develop ideas and get investment for moving things forward. So, it's more about shaping the agenda. This first meeting shaping the agenda for the first year. Once we know what that agenda looks like, and we'll develop it very quickly, we will then specifically target, you know, researchers, investors, companies with an interest in and relevance to those particular topics, so that we can then begin those discussions around particular themes of interest and hopefully build collaborative opportunities, not just between the cities, but between the cities and those other sectors.

We're very keen that this isn't a talking shop for cities to talk about their challenges and their problems, but really to get some tangible projects.

Laura Junasová: The aim of the Renewable Heating and Cooling Focus Group is to facilitate collaboration between city stakeholders and heating and cooling experts in identifying and addressing the primary challenges faced by the sector in deploying various solutions across European cities. And to achieve this, we have invited, on one side, representatives from cities, and on the other side, stakeholders from biomass, geothermal, solar thermal and heat pump sectors to join the group.

Julen Imana: As the chair, I'm responsible of Elaborating the work program for the group, making sure that all the work plan activities are actually delivered on time, coordinating some group meetings, and making sure that we have an adequate level of engagement and communication among the partners of the group.

I can say that even if this focus group has been running for a very short period of time so far, it's true that already in our kickoff meeting in December, we could see every high level of engagement and interest from all participants. So I think this is a hot topic. Well, never better said, ‘hot topic,’ the heating and cooling.

And I think it's actually a very important topic for the next few years in the decarbonization of European cities, as heating and cooling accounts for actually about half of the energy consumed in the continent. So it's very important to take action in this sense and cities know that, and industries are willing to work with cities in this.

I think the potential of this group is to end up with strong collaborations and learning from each other of municipalities and industry, and together overcoming challenges of lack of investment or technology challenges.

Anthony Colclough: Julen mentions investment and technology as two key challenges for Heating and Cooling. And as we'll see, these and other issues are also among the difficulties that our two other guests are seeking to overcome through their Focus and Discussion Groups.

Sergio Olivero: Barriers exist between the public and private sector. But, we are using, renewable energy communities as a catalyst of a new cooperation process, including both public and private stakeholders. This is important because both are members of the same entity, so they act as a community.

Be also aware that, typically, member states, tend to issue laws. Sometimes they are good laws, but, the government issues the law. Sometimes you get the incentives, but then the other government says that the incentives are not available anymore.

But, all incentivization schemes and the rules and regulations related to energy communities are the result of a transposition process of European directives, so they will not change. This is really important for the stability of the governance mechanism, and at the same time, it acts as a catalyst of a de-risking approach because the investors know that the rule will not change.

The public ESCO [Energy Services Company] named EnerBit in northern Italy near the border with Switzerland has installed a lot of charging stations, and, this is leading the energy communities to have the charging stations and the electric vehicle as [energy] loads.

For example, in the city, of Mariano Alip, there are two charging stations and they are free for citizens because they use the energy of the renewable energy community. There is a company that is managing the charging process and there is an agreement between EnerBit and this company in order to use the energy to charge cars, also with the guarantee that the energy is green.

Trevor Gibson: Smaller cities have big advantages too, and so it certainly isn't all negative being a smaller place. Being a smaller place, they often know their citizens well and have good connections into them. Because it's, you know, they can see it all from the office window. And being smaller, they're often more nimble. The ideal of building for small, but in a way that enables that to be scaled and replicated is probably a far more efficient way of developing projects.

I think my colleague Graham uses a phrase, ‘pilotitis,’ that, you know, we have got, partly because of the lack of funds, particularly in the public sector, we have got risk-averse to doing things on a big scale. So we try them out. And even when they work, it's still often difficult to build the momentum.

For smaller cities, obviously the imperative is that they often don't want to be the first to fail, so they'll wait to have a look at how a particular initiative develops in other areas, perhaps. But the sorts of money that flows from Europe, in a smaller city, those sums can be transformational. So they can be city scale. In a larger city, it can often just be a pilot. It'll affect one community on the edge of the city that happens to have the right context at that particular time.

I think one of the driving forces behind the Small Giants approach and network, as it has been up to now, as it transitions into a Focus Group, is the desire, the commitment of small places to collaborate. They simply know that they can't do things alone.

Anthony Colclough: One thing that was clear from all our guests today, despite their challenges, is that this is also a moment where a bounty of enabling conditions are coming into effect, not least through directives and funding at European level that provide the opportunity for cities to reach their sustainability ambitions and engage with businesses and other partners that share their vision.

If you are such a city, or business, now is the moment to visit smart-cities-marketplace.ec.europa.eu, where you can discover more about these opportunities, as well as find the full transcript of this and other episodes of the podcast. The smart cities marketplace and this podcast are an initiative of the European Commission made possible through European finance. Thanks for staying focused.