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Amsterdam outlines new sustainability measures

The Amsterdam College of Mayor and Alderpersons has outlined new plans to increase the pace of improving sustainability in the Dutch capital. As part of the new motion, the number of households using locally-generated sustainable electricity needs to have increased by at least 92,000 by 2020.

Concrete plans have been drawn up for energy saving efforts and accelerating the process of connecting existing houses to district heating systems. The construction market will be challenged to build greener properties. Air quality in the city will be improved through continued efforts to encourage the use of electric transport, by stimulating smart distribution processes and extending low emission zones to include more types of vehicles. During the current council term, work will be conducted at 111 schools to make them greener and healthier places to work. These measures are outlined in the Sustainability Agenda (Agenda Duurzaamheid), agreed upon by the College earlier this week.

Amsterdam embraces the notion of a circular economy and is keen to become an attractive location for innovative companies to set up shop: businesses with production processes that only produce useful raw materials instead of waste. In implementing the plans, the College will focus primarily on initiatives and projects that can be quickly rolled out on a larger scale. Alderperson for Sustainability Abdeluheb Choho: “Amsterdam is constantly growing and as such, we need to ensure that the city becomes stronger, healthier and more liveable. We’re looking to take the lead from Amsterdammers, organisations and businesses that are already demonstrating that sustainability has both financial and social benefits.” The College also envisages rapidly improving sustainability within the municipal organisation itself.

Sustainable energy

Nowadays, solar panels and wind turbines represent attractive investments for homeowners and businesses. The College plans to make it easier to install solar panels as part of the drive to ensure that electricity generated by solar panels provides power for another 80,000 households by 2020 (it currently provides electricity to 5,000 households). Wind turbines installed at locations including Amsterdam’s port areas are to provide at least another 12,000 additional households with energy by 2020. In order to ensure that living in Amsterdam remains affordable and in light of depleting gas reserves, the College is keen to accelerate connecting more houses to district heating (the primary focus being on existing homes). The College wants to increase the number of houses and businesses connected to such systems from the current total of 62,000 to 102,000 by 2020. By 2040, the envisaged number of connections is 230,000.

Energy savings

Older houses waste a significant amount of energy. With this in mind, the College plans to invest in a project that will see corporations make improvements to 1,000 older homes in order to eliminate energy bills at these properties. The project is set to provide impetus for similar projects by showing that such investment can be beneficial to residents, property owners and financiers. When it comes to new housing developments, the City of Amsterdam is keen to challenge developers to construct greener buildings than are currently required by law. As such, greater importance will be attached to sustainability during land tenders.

Emission-free traffic

Amsterdam is dedicated to remaining a frontrunner in electric transport and strives to ensure that as much traffic in the city as possible is emission free by 2025. Measures envisaged by the College include increasing the number of electric charging points from 1,000 to 4,000 and developing two new cargo hubs (goods transfer facilities) on the outskirts of the city.

In order to further reduce carbon and nitrogen dioxide emissions, as of 1 January 2017, the current low-emission zones for lorries will be extended to include delivery vans built before 2000. As of 1 January 2018, the zone will also apply to taxis and coaches. Buses operated by the GVB (the company responsible for public transport in Amsterdam) will be emission free by 2026 at the latest. The College also plans to investigate the possibility of low-emission zones for scooters that discharge harmful emissions.

The consideration of carbon is a new aspect of city policy, as the College moves from focusing on the established norms to more closely considering the health of Amsterdammers. Norms are yet to be established for carbon, but it has been proved to be harmful to health.

Leading by example

Alderperson Choho: “Amsterdam has a lot to be proud of. Our city is home to a huge amount of thinkers, doers, technical wizards, inventors, entrepreneurs and ‘everyday’ citizens who commit time and effort to making the city greener. I look forward to collaborating with these people as we work towards a circular economy in Amsterdam.”

The Sustainability Council Committee will be joined by the members of the other Council Committees to address the Sustainability Agenda on 7 January 2015, prior to the council itself addressing the subject on 21 January.

For more information, please see www.amsterdam.nl/duurzaam (in Dutch).

‘Transformcartoonist’

It says ‘Transformcartoonist‘ on the badge that hangs from a cord round my neck. I think it’s a brilliant title: Transformcartoonist. I never would have come up with that, but here at the Municipality of Genoa’s Department of Smart Cities they did and gave it to me. I wear it with pride surrounded by other badges bearing more ordinary titles such as Senior Urban Planner, Engineer, Consultant, Chief Officer, Mayor, etc.

It was a good title, not only because it gave me something to talk about during the lunch buffet here at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, where a Smart City -meeting was held this spring. It’s a good title because it doesn’t beat around the bush and unequivocally names what I do. If you don’t know what a transformcartoonist is then you probably don’t know that transformations can be accomplished using cartoons either. This is, however, precisely what I do.

Imagine, six European cities joining forces to enable their transformation into future-proof cities with acceptable electricity consumption and CO2 emissions. Experts and stakeholders meet in each other’s cities to intensively collaborate on concrete plans. These transformers originate from municipal bodies, companies and consultancies. They have multifarious backgrounds: technical; cultural, institutional, historical as well as five different languages on the basis of which people speak English with varying degrees of success.

It’s a small miracle of human civilisation and communication skills that these very different groups of transformers are capable of discussing, expanding upon and innovating such complex matters. What helps greatly is that all of them – there are truly no exceptions – are incredibly passionate about what they do. This enthusiasm is contagious and simultaneously crucial to enabling the intended transformations to take place. It’s great to be around and collaborate with people who are so driven. As a cartoonist I get to participate in these transform meetings.

Basically, as a transformcartoonist does the same as a cartoonist at a newspaper. He or she listens to what’s going on around them, then tries to understand and draw this. I show these drawings during the meetings to provide a moment of reflection. It also gives the highly varied group of transformers a communal visual language they can use. People who want to explain something complicated often call me over. I listen and draw. Together we create an image which represents the idea.

After the meeting I not only leave a drawn report of the working proces behind, but also provide a stack of images and depictions that visualise the main terms, concepts and ideas. The transformers use those to explain what they are doing to their companies, agencies and municipal organisations. There where the transformations are to take place. These subjects are complex and moreover demand ways of thinking and acting that people are not accustomed to. The transformers lead their organisations towards the unknown. It helps if you have pictures. Preferably a cartoon. From now on I’ll be referring to myself as ‘Transformcartoonist‘.

Bas Kohler
Transformcartoonist
Studio Bas Kohler

www.studiobaskohler.nl

8 Steps Towards TRANSFORMATION Agenda

At the beginning of the project the TRANSFORM team reflected on its definition of a Smart Energy City with a negligible carbon footprint. This definition also forms the vision of achievements by European Cities at the end of a true TRANSFORM process.
“The Smart Energy City is highly energy and resource efficient, and is increasingly powered by renewable energy sources; it relies on integrated and resilient resource systems, as well as insight-driven and innovative approaches to strategic planning. The application of information, communication and technology are commonly a means to meet these objectives. The Smart Energy City, as a core to the concept of the Smart City, provides its users with a liveable, affordable, climate-friendly and engaging environment that supports the needs and interests of its users and is based on a sustainable economy.” (More background information can be found on the TRANSFORM website)

The really tricky question now is how to attain this vision? The answer should be given by a TRANSFORMATION AGENDA which is subject of our project. It can be anticipated that there will be neither a patent remedy for an individual city nor a general solution matching all European cities.

But the “8 Steps towards TRANSFORMATION AGENDA”, which have been compiled, can offer some guidance for the development of tailor-made TRANSFORMATION AGENDAs suiting the unique character of a city and exploiting its specific strengths. The core of the TRANSFORMATION AGENDA is the establishment of a cycle process which ensures continuous and long-term development towards the vision.

This TRANSFORMATION CYCLE introduces recurring course corrections in order to cope with high rates of change in different areas affecting the Smart Energy City and interruptions by short-term cycles of our society (such as elections). This cycle facilitates a regular adaptation of the TRANSFORMATION AGENDA concept to incorporate innovation and tap complex circumstances step by step.

1 – Setting of targets
The 8 steps begin with a clear definition of targets by each city and an agreement to strive towards these targets by the main political stakeholders. These targets should include short-, medium and long-term components to provide first cornerstones all along the path towards the vision.

2 – Determination of status quo
If the best measures to advance on the TRANSFORMATION track shall be acquired it is necessary to analyse and evaluate the actual state of the city with respect to targets and vision in a second step. The TRANSFORM team works on several elements to perform the determination of status-quo. Information regarding some of these elements such as the Baseline Analysis, Status-Quo-Reports (by Grand Lyon and by Genoa) or the KPI list are already available online. Key stakeholders related to TRANSFORM intentions should be identified and invited to participate in the future process of exploration.

3 – Find focus points to improve development path towards TRANSFORM vision
Distinguishing between differing themes is essential because the TRANSFORMATION AGENDA should focus on the deciding challenges which can really improve the development regarding the city’s targets. Themes, which will make a difference, are likely to comprise tough tasks and tough calls, but are more rewarding when successful. Anyway, TRANSFORMATION AGENDA should not be occasion for postponements but for tackle. As part of the third step the TRANSFORM team applies so called Intake Workshops as a forum for experts to join and examine current initiating challenges with various analysis methods.

4 – Calibration of concept along Guiding Questions
Once the preceding steps are completed some strategic threads should already be available for step 4. The TRANSFORM team has developed a set of Guiding Questions which can then help to balance these threads, to prioritize their elements and to bring them together in a first raw concept.

5 – Adjustment of strategic concept to the city system and increase of impact
A good concept is closely connected with its target system, the city. If many different modes of intervention in the city development can be employed in a concept higher levels of impact are achievable. Step 5 wants to draw attention to the city as a complex adaptive system and to encourage the creators of the concept to search for links and possibilities to intervene sensibly in the system.

6 – Action Plan and Implementation Plan
Actions and measures are the means to transform the superior strategy into reality. Implementation plans concentrate tangible measures spatially and temporally aligned to the short- and medium-term targets. In step 6 these measures are deduced, evaluated and compiled. A great help for the evaluation and decision on the right actions can be the specifically for this purpose developed Decision Support Environment (DSE, read more in detail about the DSE online) provided by TRANSFORM.

7 – Design of procedures for monitoring, evaluation and adaptation
A long planning interval in the range of several decades is the basis to fulfil profound transitions towards goals and the vision of a Smart Energy City. A TRANSFORMATION AGENDA has to overcome the possible obstacle of unclear development in the city with regard to targets and must exploit its long planning interval to tackle far-reaching shifts towards the vision of a Smart Energy City. Thus, a serious monitoring in the cities is needed to determine clearly the progress and the deviation from defined targets in order to evaluate the development path. A strategy which defines reactions on deviations closes the loop to the city. The setup of adequate monitoring procedures and the assignment of responsibilities is subject of step 7.

8 – Composition of the TRANSFORMATION Agenda
Assembly of the results originating from the previous 7 steps leads to the TRANSFORMATION AGENDA in the final step 8. Its strategy focuses on the long-term perspective while its measures direct to the short- and mid-term development of the city. Furthermore the integration of accompanying research, experts and consultants can enhance the agenda’s level of quality. With respect to innovation and creative change management space for niches and experiments should be considered in the strategy. Frontrunners and change agents should be encouraged. Diversity is to be preferred over “one best way”.

TRANSFORM is trying to address and tackle challenges of which the real successes or consequences will maybe only be visible in a few decades time. If the adventure of TRANSFORM is to be successful a lot of commitment by people who are willing to take up responsibility is required to deliver the necessary impetus and continuous effort.

Do not hesitate, start with the first steps today.

Jan Riepe
Hamburg Energie GmbH

Low-Carbon Mobility Report

Early in the Transform project it became clear that the path towards low-carbon mobility is challenging one for all cities. To get an overview of the challenges, potential solutions and get insight into the best practices this study was initiated in March 2014. In the months that followed a survey was sent out and interviews were conducted with the Transform cities and international organizations (CIVITAS, Eurocities, Energycities, EPOMM, ICLEI). The results of this study were presented during the Eurocities mobility event in Venice on the 3^rd of October. View the report here.

The Cloud. Transform post #20

Last week Google started the construction of a new mega data center in Eemshaven, a harbor in the rural North of the Netherlands. This center is not just a data center but it is a serious one and it comes with big numbers. It will be as big as forty soccer fields on four floors and it will cost about 600 million. It creates jobs for 150 persons and during construction a thousand persons will be at work. It is a real cool development for Eemshaven. Maybe other investments by the big ICT companies like IBM may follow.

Impressive!

It is not all in the newspapers, but you can imagine why this spot is chosen. Some large internet cables from England, Norway and Sweden come ashore in Delfzijl (a small town near Eemshaven) and there is an abundance of energy. A coal fired power plant is under construction, form Germany huge amounts of cheap energy flows into the county and off shore wind mill parks North of Delfzijl are commissioned.

DATA, DATA, DATA, seems to be the magic word nowadays. And DATA is what this kind of centers is about: data available, twenty four seven a week, for everyone at any place at any time. This is about SMART living and being connected with your smart phone, tablet and laptop, everywhere, streaming films, uploading photos, e-mails and documents. It is called the cloud and this makes the world interactive, smart and convenient.

But this cloud does not flow seemingly effortless, as a soft white bubble above your head. The cloud is buildings, packed with hard core hardware needing ENERGY, ENERGY and ENERGY.

If it comes to energy this data center is about BIG numbers as well. This mega center is going to use as much energy as all the houses of two Northern provinces of the Netherlands: Groningen and Drenthe together! That is the energy of 526.000 houses! Smart living comes with energy consumption!

The energy consumption of our land grows, only by adding one data center, with two provinces.

How are we going to reach our 20-20-20 energy goals if we keep on sending stuff to the cloud that was in “the old days” in a book, in a DVD or on in the memory of your computer? The books, DVD’s and CD’s on my shelf do not need energy and I can turn my computer off, but not the cloud.

This is the price we pay for convenience, for living smart and with our heads in the cloud.

I started buying and reading real paper books again, watching movies in the cinema and with that supporting local business again……feels much better!

Ronald van Warmerdam
Sr project manager Projectmanagement Bureau, city of Amsterdam / lecturer TuDelft / Coordinator TRANSFORM

https://twitter.com/rvwarmerdam

Smart Cities

Original text by Jaap Modder published in S+RO 2013/05 page 11, Theme Smart Cities
Translation by Iris Kramer

If you want to know which cities are smart, you will first need to take a look at which cities are ‘stupid’. An interesting question while we were discussing the theme of this magazine. No strange idea. Are there stupid cities? But of course, even more than we would like to. Take for example a random stupid city: Hilversum in the Netherlands. During the last fifty years changes has been made to this city, but nothing has really been changed, it still contains an impossible traffic structure and a chaotic map. However, the city is full with smart people. For example the Media Park, not immediately designed smart, but filled with smart people that work there. On the other side of the world, Palo Alto, South of San Francisco. A not remarkable suburb with no smart spatial planning measures. However, it contains just about the highest concentration of ‘nerds’ of the whole world. We can conclude that there is no direct relation between smart cities and smart citizens. Songdo in Seoel is a smart city, but still fails to attract smart inhabitants. Masdar in Abu Dabi, same story.

So do we need to talk about smart cities, or is it better to talk about smart people? This discussion is a returning topic on the debate about Smart Cities, as well as in this publication. Are we talking about smart systems, which have been created by large technology companies and are applied top-down on a city, or about the possibility for citizens to be more influential about their living environment? Instead of picking sides, we consult with the ideology of Peter Hall in his magisterial work from 1998, Cities in Civilization. According to Peter Hall a successful city in the twenty-first century contains a ‘marriage’ between culture and creativity on the one side and technology on the other side. Eindhoven (the Netherlands) used to have a beta culture, but nowadays they have brought fashion and design into the city. They understood the lesson of Hall. Without creativity and citizen engagement cities are destined to fail. The crowd can generate data to improve the system, but at the same time the crowd can use the data to improve the city’s livableness, accessibility, sustainability and safety.

Is ‘Smart Cities’ going to change the cities in the physical sense? On the long term, yes. More space for pedestrians, cyclists and common space. Less parking spaces needed, because we need less tarmac because we have smart cars and we share cars instead of own them. This is starting to get visible already. More fresh air and less noise, because we need less time to search for a parking space. More smart distribution and less stores. Shopping streets are becoming live/work streets again with the implementation of 3D printers. Smarter navigation systems are making traditional signposts redundant. The information level of our city comes to a higher level due to augmented reality.

What does the Smart City do more for spatial planning and urbanism? In recent discussions amongst spatial planning experts the necessity to stay focused on the future and being directional came to order. We no longer need to only react to fast technological developments, trend-sensitive spatial claims or – maybe even worse – be a slave of the data created yesterday. Even in the spatial planning a marriage is needed between beta and gamma, and calculators and draughtsmen.

According to us, Smart City is here to stay. Technological innovations are continuing unabated. Big data and the Internet of Things are unstoppable. A smart city knows how to connect the collective system and individuals. This can be made possible with the help of feedback loops and the crowd, to create fast moments to comment on developments. How to make this tangible, and what role the government has to play in this development, is still uncertain. Smart cities and smart people are asking for smart governments and smart professionals!

Amsterdam wins City Climate Leadership Award 2014

TRANSFORM would like to congratulate Amsterdam with winning the City Climate Leadership Award.

Siemens and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) announced the winners of the City Climate Leadership Awards 2014 at a ceremony held on Monday night the 22th of September in New York City. The Awards honor cities all over the world for excellence in urban sustainability and leadership in the fight against climate change. The winning cities in the ten award categories are:

Amsterdam (Finance & Economic Development)
Barcelona (Intelligent City Infrastructure)
Buenos Aires (Solid Waste Management)
London (Carbon Measurement & Planning and Air Quality)
Melbourne (Adaptation & Resilience)
New York City (Energy Efficient Built Environment)
Portland (Sustainable Communities)
Seoul (Green Energy)
Shenzhen (Urban Transportation)

To read the whole press release you can download the following PDF file.2014 City Climate Leadership Awards Press Release

For more information about the categories and all the finalists can be found on this website.

The Vienna ILS. Transform post #19

One of the methods of Transform is working in city districts on sustainable energy systems as part of urban (re)development. The work is done in a three days’ workshop where Transform cities and partners are present and discuss with local stakeholders on energy transformation issues. The workshop is called Intensive Lab Sessions (ILS). The idea is that with working with all mayor stakeholders and Transform partners Smart Energy solutions can be generated due to exchanging experiences and a “fresh view” form outsiders on problems and solutions. On September 9, 10 and 11 the Vienna ILS was held.

Picture was taken by Richard Macho.

We experienced remarkable differences and similarities between our Transform cities.

The last Transform ILS, in Vienna, dealt about the new city district of Aspern. Part of this new district, with housing for 20.000 inhabitants, is under construction. If it comes to energy, the system in the district consists of a heat grid and a grid for electricity. In this post I focus on the heat system.

The largest part of the Aspern area – the North – is in the design-phase now, but it is not clear yet what the new energy system will look like. One of the working groups discussed about the governance behind new grids. According to the local head grid company, Wiener Stadtwerke, who unfortunately wasn’t present at the ILS, the business case of the heat system is not feasible. As I understood due to the local requirements and the return of investment policy Fernwärme Wien, a part of Stadtwerke, the builder of the head grids in the first part of Aspern. They are therefore not yet willing to invest in the new, highly sustainable system of the next parts of Aspern.

What is interesting of the ILS, is that different cities and their city partners like HOFOR and IBA are involved. During the Vienna ILS, Copenhagen and Hamburg shared their experiences in building new heat grids for residential districts in their cities.

It turned out that the features of new city districts in the different Transform cities are for the biggest part comparable. In Copenhagen and Hamburg, building new grids is “a no brainer” and feasible! But in Vienna it is not. The greatest difference boils down to the fact that the energy price for inhabitants in Vienna is maximised and in Copenhagen or Hamburg, it is not. And as a result this does not fit the return of investment policy of the grid company as mentioned above.

But strangely enough Wiener Stadtwerke is a semi privatised body that is fully owned by the city. In my reasoning the circle is round and there is no problem if the city decides to lower the ROI of the new sustainable grid.

I understood the financial problem is not that big, compared for instance to the huge investments in the subway line to Aspern. The deficit in the business case maximises to 2 million and related to writing of the investments in 40 to 50 years this does not feel as a big issue. I am sure that Aspern will be there in 40 years with inhabitants needing energy and heat.

In the next post I will elaborate on about the solution that came up.

Another issue I want to discuss is the relation between the improved quality of new building and heat grids. This is a more general problem in all our cities. All our cities have, during the last decades, raised the energy performance of new buildings. The result is a dramatic decline in head demand. (while electricity stays more or less the same or increases). With this strong reduced demand the business case behind new district heating systems is becoming more and more problematic.

But the solution could be, as shown above, rather simple. Again, a pity that not all stakeholders were attending the ILS……

Kind regards from Vienna.

Ronald van Warmerdam
Sr project manager Projectmanagement Bureau, city of Amsterdam / lecturer TuDelft / Coordinator TRANSFORM

https://twitter.com/rvwarmerdam