The Sharing Cities ‘lighthouse’ programme aimed to provide ground for a better, common approach to make smart cities a reality. By fostering international collaboration between industry and cities, the project seeks to develop affordable, integrated, commercial-scale smart city solutions with a high market potential.
Coordinated by the Greater London Authority, it has brought together 6 cities and 34 partners composed of industry representatives, non-governmental organisations and academia from across Europe. Lisbon, London and Milan – the three ‘lighthouse’ cities – shared common challenges; bring extensive experiences; and are committed to working together in developing and implementing replicable urban digital solutions and models for collaboration. ‘Fellow’ cities of Bordeaux, Burgas and Warsaw have played a very active role in driving the adoption and exploitation of specific solutions.
Sharing Cities offered a framework for citizen engagement and collaboration at local level, thereby strengthening trust between cities and citizens. The project attracted €24 million in EU funding and aimed to trigger €500 million in investment and to engage over 100 municipalities across Europe.
The work developed under Sharing Cities project has proven that climate tech works and that it must be a crucial part of our carbon reduction plans and demonstrated that there is a strong business case for adopting multiple types of technology to improve our cities. It has also showed that there is a market for this technology that needs to be developed.
Sharing Cities main outputs:
- smart street infrastructure (including over 2,400 smart lampposts)
- 3 data platforms (including building in functionality to the London Datastore)
- 3 district energy management systems, retrofitting buildings with digital controls (67,612 sqm in 34 large buildings including 100’s of apartments in public housing and private housing, schools and civic buildings including Lisbon’s historic UNESCO City Hall)
- six types of shared, electric mobility solutions (including 274 311 EV charging points, 2,400 1,410 e-bikes and 3430 smart parking spaces) - all in different regulatory environments.
Lisbon lighthouse city
Led by Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (CML), E-REDES role as a partner covered all the Distribution System Operator (DSO) activities for implementing the necessary solutions at Lisbon Demonstration Area, such as:
- Report of Urban Sharing Platform Operation and Reuse
- Portfolio of co-designed Urban Services
- Dashboards, decision support systems produced for operating and engaging with the systems
- Energy efficiency services in Portuguese DEMO
- Promote energy efficiency literacy: Clients, using Gamification in schools
- Promote electrical mobility: acquisition PCVEs
Known for its hilly topography, the implementation of an electric bike sharing scheme in Lisbon, managed via the Sharing Lisboa app, has transformed the way people think about moving around the city.
The Sharing Cities project team involved 70 E-REDES employees, comprising approximately 30% of women, reporting around 15,000 hours of work.
A work coordinated by the Directorate of European Projects and Policies (DPPE) and which had the active and indispensable collaboration of several organizational units of E-REDES.
Sharing Cities Lisbon main outputs:
- reduction of 1,399,265 kwh/yr and 597 tco2/yr saved through retrofitting buildings
- deep energy-efficiency retrofit of historic Lisbon city hall leads to 36% energy savings and 50% reduction in electricity usage from the grid
- e-bike sharing scheme generated over 3 million trips by 16,000 users and 292 tco2 eq. savings
- the scheme led to a 38% modal shift from the bus, 16% from cars, and generated 20% new trips. 26% of users use the scheme daily
- planned citywide e-bike scheme expansion to more than 200 stations and 2000 bikes, 80% of which will be electric
- supporting the reduction of emissions by promoting mobility electrification in the centre of the cities (EVs)
- citizen engagement and disseminating knowledge towards energy efficiency (in schools, Houses and in the municipality)
By the end, the programme was set to deliver significant positive change and the measures implemented delivered significant increases in energy efficiency allowing to increase the programme’s total impact in accordance with the mention of this project in the innovation Europe radar (http://www.innoradar.eu/)
As smart cities are all about the people who live and work in them, Sharing Cities work has definitely improved the lives of thousands of people.
The final project report with more detailed information will be made available shortly. To learn more please visit sharingcities.eu
