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Can we start really living smart already?!

Like any city, Amsterdam has a CO₂ reduction ambition. We know that we cannot do this by ourselves. So we share what we know with others, to facilitate others to also take action on their energy system.

The city made the energy atlas and decided to make an application on it to make the information in the atlas more accessible to others. The application should use its own data, and use data from others. We found out the city and its users produce soooo much data! There is so much to choose from: How much garbage do we produce? Where do people ask for taxis? What are the most used taxi routes? When and where do people use WIFI? How much energy do we use and when? How much renewable energy do we produce?

Our search showed us that many companies already have their own tool or application to optimize their own business based on data. A world of tooling and apps opened up to us. We discovered that all sorts of energy data is already linked with information on weather predictions, traffic, etc. And we saw that the municipality is lagging behind!

Questions that could help us act smarter if we combine the answers the city already produces individually! We could use energy when there is a surplus. The city could pick up garbage when it is needed, not on the set day. How does the weather affect our behaviour (staying or going, choice of modality, choice of route, etc.) in the city? As a spatial planning department we should ask ourselves: Is this something we can act/design on? And how should we do that?

So the question arises: How can we become really smart and start combining each other’s findings and conclusion?!

Everyone tries to be smart for themselves, but could not we be even smarter together!?

Laura Hakvoort
Energy Atlas and Decision Support Tool
City of Amsterdam

Privatization or Progress. Transform post #18

Coal Fired Power Plant Amsterdam

On July 9th Seumas Milne, correspondent of the Guardian, wrote an interesting article about the “gains” of privatization under the title: “The tide is turning against the scam that is privatization“. The subtitle is: “The international revival of public ownership is anathema to our City-led elite. But it’s vital to genuine economic recovery”.

The article deals about the discussion in England about the failure of the private market to deliver what was promised. He states: “Privatization isn’t working. We were promised a shareholding democracy, competition, falling costs and better services. A generation on, most people’s experience has been the opposite. From energy to water, rail to public services, the reality has been private monopolies, perverse subsidies, exorbitant prices, woeful under-investment, profiteering and corporate capture”.

Is this what we experience in Transform as well?

For a transition towards a low carbon society huge investments in new and existing infrastructure are needed. Old carbon based energy systems needs to be replaced for sustainable structures to protect us from climate change and to become more independent from non-democratic energy providers like Russia. We all know the reasons why.

I have three examples and a question

Hamburg

In Hamburg the energy supplier will become public again. And Hamburg is not the only German example. After the privatization started, 100 privatized energy concessions are not prolonged and now back in public hands. In Hamburg, one of our Transform partners, the public voted by referendum to do so and turn back privatization of the energy infrastructure and production. And maybe it is understandable. Vattenfall’s prime aim is shareholder interest. And although Vattenfall is owned by the Swedisch state, the public interest and investments needed for a low carbon future elsewhere seems not to count. I am told the aim is 18% return on investment on a yearly basis. My feeling is that this is not leaving much room for innovative, sustainable and future resilient solutions.

Lyon

The second example of market failure I found in Lyon. The concession for running the cities’ heat and cold grid and the connected power stations, expired about six years ago. The current company running the system, Dalkia, won the tender. But the losers (Gaz de France?) started a lawsuit against the municipality on procedural grounds. The last six years several courts decided in favor of the municipality but Suez is going to the European court now. as I understand several politicians are mixed up in the problem. In the meantime all investments in new head grids and installations are postponed. Leaving the city paralyzed on their road to sustainable infrastructure development.

The Netherlands

In the Netherlands we had a system for social housing run by foundations; decent institutions working for the public good. From the nineties on all foundations are more or less privatized and under distant “control” of state regulators. Yes, with privatization comes regulation because we cannot always trust the market. Since then, a lot went wrong and the last months public hearings are held about this privatization. Personal greed was one conclusion, but also the failure to control the system by the government. And the last is understandable, and concluded by Milne as well: “Experience has shown that you can’t control what you don’t own”.

To Tranform new investments are needed

Society needs energy, water, sewerage, connectivity to exist, day by day. No wonder the energy part of our economy is so huge and influential and no wonder private companies want a share of it. Because of privatization cities have to deal with several companies and stakeholders to design and build new systems. And, as we experience, it turns out to be extremely difficult. Stakeholders have, as shown in the above examples, different interest and goals and don’t start working together for the public good because a municipality wants it. And it is understandable. The different interests are not always about building a sustainable infrastructure for the future.

This is one of the challenges of Transform. The question is, can we bring together the stakeholders and start designing and building needed infrastructure? Or is it impossible and do we have to turn back privatisation like Hamburg or England?

What is your opinion?

Further reading: Suemas Milne / weownit

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

https://twitter.com/rvwarmerdam

Can we tender innovation? Transform post #17

Smart city development is -to my opinion- all about finding new ways to improve liveability of cities with the support of ICT. But what a smart city really is; nobody seems to know. I think because it sounds nice: cities want to be called smart; because the opposite is what you don’t want to be: a stupid city.

But what is it? Smart is too a vague word to express what it intends to be. For me, innovation is a key word. Innovation is what we need to build better and sustainable cities. Smart alone doesn’t represent that.

If being smart is all about innovation, what does it mean and how does it work?

Cities and other public institutions need to tender things they buy. If it is a product, a consult, an advise or a design. Before starting the tender they have to make a description of what it is they want to buy. But how do you describe innovation? How on earth can you describe something you don’t know? Because “it” is not there yet and has to be developed, designed or invented. Innovation is something you don’t know upfront. Innovation comes before a program of requirement, before a design and way before a product can be made.

During the Amsterdam smart city event the mayor of Eindhoven, Rob van Gijsel, stated that this devilish problem is maybe one off the reasons ICT projects of governments often fail. And I think he is right. If, along the way, the planned innovation needs a completely different direction -and this is not unthinkable- this will be blocked by the rules of local or European procurement….

Do you think this will help Smart City development?

Back to smart. How can cities be smart? By tendering in the old way? Open procedures; restricted procedures; negotiation; competitive dialogue or framework agreements? Or is there a different way? Can we make procedures more flexible to overcome the above dilemma? By working with a step by step approach and slowly building up experience with the market to find smart solutions?

What is your opinion?

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

https://twitter.com/rvwarmerdam

About systems. Transform post #16

One component of Transform is the Intensive Lab Session (ILS). All cities in Transform designated a district where urban transformation is taking place and energy transformation is a mayor challenge. During the ILS, all stakeholders of the district meet to discuss on the energy challenges. To enrich the session, urban & energy planners from other Transform cities participate to give an outside perspective.

The idea behind the ILS is that it is impossible to restructure existing urban districts, without shared goals and strategy between all stakeholders. The same accounts for the design and development of new city districts. So, gathering all stakeholders is important when designing future city development. Transform builds tools to support the decision process between stakeholders.

In the first week of July 2014 we, the Transform team, were invited to discuss with stakeholders in “La Part Dieu”, an inner city business? district of Lyon. We had three days of very interesting sessions with about fifty participants. The goal of “La Part Dieu” is to double the floor space to the area without increasing the energy needed. A huge challenge!
A lot can be said about the sessions, what we learned and what we discussed. For this post I will focus on energy systems alone and Transform tools.

The old way
About ten years ago city design was mostly about the infrastructure and buildings above ground. To get energy, water and other utilities we called the energy providers to connect buildings, streetlights etc. to the gas, electricity, heat, water systems. Systems (almost) separately designed by technical staff of municipal or state owned energy divisions.

Since then a lot has been changed. Energy companies are privatized, networks are decoupled from the energy producers (in most of the cities), energy networks are owned by the public but operated by private companies, sustainable energy is needed to protect the climate; keep the air clean; and to be less reliable on foreign resources, buildings are more and more energy efficient; sometimes producing energy, thousands of new producers (Photo Voltaic) are entering the system, electrical cars are becoming reality, , the energy price has become far more volatile due to the ramp up of renewable sources, no party has the overall decision power in the system, …….to name a few.

It is transition time!

Today
During the sessions we had discussion about the way today’s La Part Dieu energy systems works. It turned out that no-one knows exactly because there are so (too?) many stakeholders involved and data is only partly available. For instance: the network company doesn’t know what happens behind the front door of houses or office buildings. The energy company doesn’t know where the energy is coming from. The city doesn’t know what the renewable energy potential is in the area. Investments are needed in gas infrastructure, district heating, cooling and electricity but what the best system is, couldn’t be answered……….. It turns out that solutions differ from building to building. And last but not least because of a law suit against the municipality about a tender, all investments in the district heating and cooling infrastructure are postponed (for about six years now!).

The next problem is that needed data is hardly available. Energy distributors are reluctant to provide the city (and other stakeholders) with energy related information, because they think it could be bad for business, in conflict with privacy rules or because data release is forbidden by regulations or owned by their clients. But we all know that it is impossible to design new systems without a sound business case behind it. We all know that you can’t make decisions for investment if the business case is incomplete. Especially in designing complex district refit projects, during energy transition. Without the basic information you can’t start designing resilient future urban plans and related systems!

Future systems
This is where Transform comes in. Transform is building methods, like the ILS, to support designing new future energy systems for cities. The future above ground city design and the underground utility systems are to be designed together, intertwined, as a whole. Therefore, all stakeholders – and it’s different from the old days – are to be involved and part of the “game”.

To support decision making Transform builds an interactive web based ‘Decision Support Environment’ (DSE) to simulate and compare several possible energy systems for a given district or city. To engage stakeholders and give them a better insight in their role and the cooperation needed in the new energy landscape Accenture developed a serious game. The game was tested during one of our Lyon sessions. To my opinion it was successful!

Within some months the DSE and the game will be ready for use. We hope that the DSE and the game will help our and other cities to (re)design their future energy systems.

Two remarks
1. The DSE only works with sufficient and reliable data. To build and compare the different (above and underground) energy systems, data about energy, data about technical measures and financial data about different measures are needed. And as described above, it is not always easy to get the needed data.
2. I know that making a good decision can be (partly) based on “gut feeling”. But I also think that decisions about complex multi stakeholder related systems, such as city development, can’t be taken on feelings alone. I’m convinced that the DSE and the game will support the wanted ratio behind it.

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

https://twitter.com/rvwarmerdam