REMOURBAN Site Nottingham

The area around Sneinton Road in Nottingham is considered to be the most appropriate for the development of the REMOURBAN demo site in the United Kingdom. The site is nearby the existing district heating and the pipeline reaches Bio City, situated very close to Sneinton Road. There is substantial Nottingham City Council housing in the area that needs upgrading to a much more energy-efficient state. Near the site is one of the famous city landmarks – George Green’s Windmill – and the science centre.

With expected impacts of 50 % energy savings, 26 % CO2 reduction and directly involving 8 100 citizens, Nottingham is implementing a variety of actions in the fields of low-energy districts, sustainable mobility, and an integrated infrastructure and society.

An intensive retrofitting programme will be developed in the Sneinton area in order to achieve a low-energy district. The district heating intervention will extend the existing district heating network (4 700 homes) by using the low-temperature return heating for the first time on this system, and maybe for the first time in the United Kingdom as a whole. As regards mobility and transport, the actions foreseen are going to reinforce the city’s sustainable transport strategy by improving the transportation infrastructure, extending the city’s fleet of electric buses and developing a small local consolidation centre for last-mile-delivery by using small electric vehicles for the transportation of goods at the city centre, thereby reducing the number of large vehicles used for domestic and business deliveries.

All these measures are complemented by ICT technologies and social actions, including a citizen engagement strategy, a social media strategy, a real-time integrated city model, a strategy for development of integrated urban plan, funding models to help private owners of retrofitted properties, a smart energy map and a common sustainable and smartness evaluation procedure.