10 Projects

The City of Manchester is one of 10 local authorities that make up the Greater Manchester conurbation.  Manchester has a population of over 500,000 with one of the largest economies in the UK. The innovation district, ’Oxford Road Corridor Manchester’, has been the focus of Triangulum’s activities in the city – a 2 km long spine that contains two of the UK’s largest universities and one of the largest medical research campuses in Western Europe, it makes up 20% of the city’s economic output. It employs 71,700, with an estimated 7,000 new jobs by 2025. There also are 80,000 students in the Oxford Road Corridor.

The Manchester Triangulum consortium is led by the City Council and includes Siemens PLC, Pixel Mill, University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Manchester’s approach is based upon an understanding that cities function as systems, involving a complex interaction between individuals, markets, infrastructure networks and public services. Every intervention has been chosen because it demonstrates the benefits of integration in different ways.

Triangulum has enabled the partners to build on the work already undertaken to establish a smarter, more independent infrastructure whereby energy generation, its supply, storage and use is managed in a more demand responsive manner.

The new investments in renewable energy generation, supply and demand management have been connected through a new ICT infrastructure managed by Siemens.  The project has also created a data platform - a Manchester-i.  This aims to allow enable greater analysis and better informed decision making at both a strategic and operational level.   In addition, the city’s programme to remove cars on Oxford Road, in the Corridor area supported a mobility component focused on electric vehicles and eCargo bikes.

The City of Pamplona is considered to be the city with the highest quality of life in Spain. Also, it is highly regarded for developing its energy grid based renewable energy resources (RES).                              

Other than providing RES to the community, it will other smart and sustainable solutions for its communities by empowering and protecting the citizens through fair and socially inclusive actions.

The city of Innsbruck in Austria (120 000 inhabitants) defined its 2025 Energy Plan back in 2009. In this context, and as part of the SINFONIA project, the city has selected its eastern district to demonstrate the large-scale implementation of energy-efficient measures, with the objective of achieving on average 40 % to 50 % primary energy savings in the demo sites, and to increase by at least 30 % the share of renewables in the district’s energy mix.

Växjö municipality, together with its inhabitants, businesses, organisations and university, are all working towards a better environment and a smaller carbon footprint. The city has high ambitions to make itself sustainable, energy-efficient, fossil fuel-free and with a large proportion of wooden buildings. Växjö aims to be at the forefront and therefore participates in various EU projects, among which is the READY project, that demonstrates how the demand of energy and particularly the needs for fossil fuels and release of CO2 can be considerably reduced to nearly zero, and show a sustainable way forward for other European cities.

The project has a whole-city approach, which includes interventions in the fields of retrofitting buildings, integrated energy systems, ICT, and mobility and transportation.

Aarhus is the second biggest city in Denmark with 300 000 inhabitants. With the aim to become carbon neutral by 2030, the city moves forward with its climate and smart city strategy with a number of sustainable actions and projects, amongst which is READY.

With demonstration measures in the fields of retrofitting buildings, integrated energy systems, ICT and mobility and transportation, Aarhus aims to showcase how the demand for energy and particularly the need for fossil fuels and the release of CO2 can be considerably reduced to nearly zero, and show a sustainable way forward for other European cities.

The city of Amsterdam has over 850,000 residents from 180 different countries, who own more than 600,000 bicycles. The wider Amsterdam Metropolitan Area has close to 2.5 million inhabitants. The city has a strong commitment to encourage green research, development and investment in sustainable initiatives. As a result, the area is enjoying a rapid uptake of electric transportation and a growing number of companies are developing sustainable products that influence global business. Amsterdam is exceptionally well connected, both physically and digitally.

The city has acted in line with the EU’s 20-20-20 climate targets and has the ambitious goal to reduce CO2 with 40 % compared to 1990 by the year 2025. The City-zen project was one of the major projects in which the city worked with its partners to scale up innovative energy solutions and open networks.

The demonstration objectives of City-zen in Amsterdam were focused on retrofitting existing housing, making the e-grid smarter, and improving and expanding the heat grid.

Lessons Learned:

In 5 years of City-zen, the 20 projects yielded many lessons learned.

Top 3 lessons learned overall:

1. Connect

Although it is far from easy, it is also highly advisable to organize peer meetings and exchange ideas between teams from different cities as the meetings will lead to deeper levels of understanding

2. Plan time

Even when fully involved in the implementation of solutions it is important to devote time for experience sharing and dissemination

3. Empower citizens

Involve citizens/inhabitants and truly put them at the heart of the solutions' implementation

More overall learnings can be found in this document: http://www.cityzen-smartcity.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/interactive_final-deliverable-book.pdf

Learnings per project (for example, smart grid projects, retrofitting projects, etc) can be found in the project reports on this page: http://www.cityzen-smartcity.eu/home/reporting/deliverables/