Smart Cities and Communities

The COP21 Paris Agreement recognises the role of cities and calls on them to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change. The EU is committed to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including Sustainable Development Goal 11 ("Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable"). Many forward-looking cities have set themselves climate goals whose achievement rests on wide scale roll out of highly integrated and highly efficient energy systems.

To achieve the necessary energy transition in cities, it is essential to increase energy systems integration and to push energy performance levels significantly beyond the levels of current EU building codes and to realize Europe wide deployment of Positive Energy Districts by 2050.

This call will also contribute to the specific objectives of the SET Plan action 3.2 - Smart cities and communities - focussing on positive-energy blocks/districts.

Scope

Integrated innovative solutions for Positive Energy Blocks/Districts will be developed and tested and performance-monitored in the Lighthouse Cities. Projects will consider the interaction and integration between the buildings, the users and the larger energy system as well as implications of increased electro-mobility, its impact on the energy system and its integration in planning.

Lighthouse Cities will closely collaborate with the Follower Cities and should act as exemplars helping to plan and initiate the replication of the deployed solutions in the Follower cities, adapted to different local conditions.

As a sustainable energy transition will see increased electro-mobility, its impact on the energy system needs to be understood and well integrated in planning.

Definition: Positive Energy Blocks/Districts consist of several buildings (new, retro-fitted or a combination of both) that actively manage their energy consumption and the energy flow between them and the wider energy system. Positive Energy Blocks/Districts have an annual positive energy balance. They make optimal use of elements such as advanced materials, local RES, local storage, smart energy grids, demand-response, cutting edge energy management (electricity, heating and cooling), user interaction/involvement and ICT.

Positive Energy Blocks/Districts are designed to be integral part of the district/city energy system and have a positive impact on it. Their design is intrinsically scalable and they are well embedded in the spatial, economic, technical, environmental and social context of the project site.

To increase impact beyond the demonstration part of the project, each Lighthouse City and Follower City will develop, together with industry, its own bold city-vision for 2050. The vision should cover urban, technical, financial and social aspects. Each vision should come with its guide for the city on how to move from planning, to implementation, to replication and scaling up of successful solutions.

Proposals should also:

• Focus on mixed use urban districts and positively contribute to the overall city goals;
• Develop solutions that can be replicated/gradually scaled up to city level. The technical, financial, social, and legal feasibility of the proposed solutions should be demonstrated in the actual proposal.
• Make local communities and local governments (particularly city planning departments) an active and integral part of the solution, increase their energy awareness and ensure their sense of ownership of the smart solutions. This should ensure sustainability of Positive Energy Blocks/Districts;
• Promote decarbonisation, while improving air quality.
• Incorporate performance monitoring (ideally for more than 2 years) of deployed solutions from the earliest feasible moment. All relevant performance data must be incorporated into the Smart Cities Information System database (SCIS).

Projects should also deliver:

• Effective business models for sustainable solutions;
• Practical recommendations arising from project experience on:
  • regulatory, legal aspects and data security/protection;
  • gender and socio-economics (Social Sciences and Humanities);
  • storage solutions (from short-term to seasonal);
  • big data, data management and digitalisation;
  • electro-mobility: i) its impact on energy system and ii) appropriate city planning measures to support large scale roll-out;

Eligible costs are primarily those that concern the innovative elements of the project needed to:

• connect and integrate buildings;
• enable Positive Energy Blocks/Districts;
• foster innovative systems integration;
• complement the wider energy system.

Costs of commercial technologies are not eligible, for example:

• Buildings: purchase, construction, retrofitting and maintenance;
• Electric vehicles and charging stations: purchase, installation and maintenance;
• City-level ICT platforms: purchase, development and maintenance;
• Standard, commercially-available RES: purchase, development and maintenance.

Projects are expected to cooperate with other Smart Cities and Communities projects funded under Horizon 2020 as well as the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC).

Therefore, proposals should foresee a work package for cooperation with other selected projects and earmark appropriate resources (5% of the requested EU contribution) for coordination and communication efforts and research work associated with cross-cutting issues.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 15 to 20 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Typically, projects should have a duration of 48 to 60 months.

Expected Impact

Projects should contribute to:

• Meeting EU climate mitigation and adaptation goals and national and/or local energy, air quality and climate targets, as relevant;
• Significantly increased share of i) renewable energies, ii) waste heat recovery and iii) appropriate storage solutions (including batteries) and their integration into the energy system and iv) reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
• Lead the way towards wide scale roll out of Positive Energy Districts;
• Significantly improved energy efficiency, district level optimized self-consumption, reduced curtailment;
• Increased uptake of e-mobility solutions;
• Improved air quality.

The higher the replicability of the solutions across Europe, the better.

Delegation Exception Footnote

It is expected that this topic will continue in 2020.