Retrofitting actions at Torrelago (Spain) district are coming to an end and a new time for reflection, analysis and assessment is about to start. CITyFiED is at the heart of Laguna de Duero (Valladolid, Spain) and has established the foundations towards a more sustainable development of the city and healthier urban environments.
CITyFiED has embraced the Torrelago residents in a democratic process to take part and decide on the renovation actions. At the same time, the CITyFiED representatives have ensured that the retrofitting investments all made economic sense to the residents so they can benefit from them. In a truly cooperative approach, CITyFiED representatives and residents have carried out an extensive demonstration action at Torrelago district from June 2014. All of the main economic and technological aspects in terms of building retrofitting, district heating system upgrade, integration of renewable energy sources and monitoring have been addressed by means of a systemic approach in order to achieve not only significant energy savings and very low CO2 emissions but also remarkable improvements in the residents’ comfort conditions.
Torrelago district renovation means the retrofitting of 143,025 m2 of living space and achieving 1,488 dwelling retrofitting actions for meeting the CITyFiED targets, i.e. reducing the energy demand up to 40% and avoiding at least 3,500 tons of CO2 emissions per year. The 31 buildings have been retrofitted with an external thermal insulation composite system, and the application of the finishing coat with primer and paint coating is only pending in 5 buildings. Dismantling scaffolding will be finished by May 2018.
In parallel to the building renovation action, the old energy system composed of two independent gas-based district heating networks has been upgraded. One of the previous gas boiler rooms has been replaced by a new biomass boiler room of 3.5 MW and the two networks have been merged to build a new multi-source (biomass and gas) district heating system that covers the 80% of the thermal demand with renewable energy sources. In addition, new variable flow pumps, heat exchange substations, individual smart meters and thermostats have been installed, together with a micro-cogeneration system to generate 33 kW of power and 73.4 kW of useful thermal energy.
After the large renovation action, one full year monitoring campaign is approaching and the CITyFiED monitoring platform is ready to collect information from the new energy systems and deliver environmental, technical, economic and social key performance indicators by March 2019.
Energy efficiency is taking its place as a major energy resource in Laguna de Duero city to achieve sustainability and growth targets. Indeed CITyFiED investment in Laguna de Duero, more than 16.5 M€, has provided many different benefits to citizens and other local stakeholders. Whether by directly reducing energy consumption and associated costs, which can enable investment in other goods and services, or facilitating the achievement of other objectives, e.g. making indoor environments healthier or boosting industrial productivity
Citizens, as main users of the city environment, have clear benefits in their daily: raising the economic activity in the city, which has led to a reduction of unemployment with 50 new jobs created in the CITyFiED context, enhancement of their environment and quality of life, and also to be on board for the transition to the concept of smart city of the future, with more comfort at city level and more technology at the service of the citizen. Even utilities and other energy providers benefit in a variety of ways from CITyFiED energy efficiency measures. Direct benefits include lower costs for energy generation, transmission and distribution, improved system reliability, dampened price volatility in wholesale markets and the possibility of delaying or deferring costly system upgrades.
CITyFiED actions in Laguna de Duero has reached more than 4,000 inhabitants that directly benefit from the project actions and their different testimonies on the district retrofitting actions play a key role in the deliberations of CITyFiED representatives. Reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions is not only about adapting new technologies, but ensuring that these technologies are also being accepted by the public. Being able to talk about concrete examples that have proven to be efficient allow us push forward energy retrofitting projects and solutions beyond CITyFiED.
The importance of the train from an economic point of view is beyond dispute. It emerged as one of the most extraordinary innovations in the Industrial Revolution, because although it is true that the first steam locomotives had already been created before, it was during this period when the potential of this new means of transport could be seen.
Over the years, it has become one of the preferred means of transport for citizens, because of its safety and speed, only surpassed by the airplane. Furthermore, in contrast to the use of private vehicles, rail service contributes to fuel economy per passenger and is therefore more sustainable than other means of transport.
According to data from ADIF (Administrator of Railway Infrastructures), in Spain a train passenger consumes 5 times less litres of petrol equivalent per kilometre than traveling by car, and 20 times less than traveling by airplane. Or, for example, transporting one tonne of goods by rail consumes 4 times less litres of petrol equivalent than by road, and 1,380 times less than by air.
But, what about the construction of the railway infrastructure necessary for the movement of trains? Is it sustainable?
This was the premise of the LIFE HUELLAS project, led by CARTIF, together with the companies Vias y Construcciones and IK-Ingeniería and the University of Granada. Its objective was to improve the construction process of railway tracks in terms of their environmental impact, with special emphasis on those aspects that affect climate change.
It should be borne in mind that the railway infrastructure is made up of civil works such as bridges, viaducts, tunnels and service roads, and of the superstructure, made up of rails, sleepers, fastening material, and electrification, signalling and track safety installations. The production, construction and maintenance of all this infrastructure has a high environmental impact.
The LIFE HUELLAS consortium considered that life cycle assessment techniques, combined with intelligent data analysis, could help reduce the carbon and water footprint of railway infrastructure works by 10% and 5% respectively.
After four and a half years of intensive work, the project has managed to reduce an average of 12.9% of the carbon footprint and 14.1% of the water footprint per kilometre built in the works that have been used as pilots, i.e. better results than expected. Quite a success.
The project began with an exhaustive collection of basic information to analyse the environmental impact of the construction of railway networks, based on previously identified variables. Later, participating companies focused their efforts on studying the transformation of environmental impact into carbon and water footprints, through the development of a consolidated assessment methodology.
From this compilation, a smart tool will establish different planning alternatives applying computational intelligence techniques and showing specific values of footprint and previously selected environmental indicators. That is to say, the objective is to help in the decision-making process during the planning phase of the works.
Furthermore, the research team has developed a free online tool that provides a detailed environmental diagnosis of the processes involved in the construction of this type of infrastructure. This tool, available on the project website www.life-huellas.eu, allows the development of railway projects with not only economic, but also environmental and social criteria.
For the development of both tools, the consortium has exhaustively studied more than 460 project units and a collection of relevant sustainability variables and indicators, grouped in:
Environmental indicators: carbon and water footprint, acidification potential, photochemical oxidation and eutrophication.
Social indicators: improving working conditions, health and safety, human rights, governance, community infrastructure and job creation.
Economic indicators: project costs.
Tests were carried out during the demonstration phase of the project in two real works; on the one hand, the Ponte Ambía (Orense)-Taboadela (Orense) section of the Madrid-Galicia high speed line for the track infrastructure, that is for the earthworks (embankments, trenches, tunnels, etc.) and for the factory works (bridges, drainage, viaducts and level crossings); and on the other hand, the Antequera (Málaga)-Loja (Granada) section, for the track superstructure over which the trains run, whose main elements are ballast, sleepers, rail, electrification and signalling.
With the aim of contributing to these processes in terms of sustainability, the consortium has compiled in a guide of Good Practices the main conclusions of the experience acquired during the development of the project, as well as the different sustainable alternatives proposed.
Although LIFE HUELLAS project has already been completed, railway works on which it has been validated have effectively reduced the carbon and water footprint of their construction phase, contributing to the environmental improvement.
In addition, free access to the calculator will remain available at www.life-huellas.eu for anyone to use. You can also find us at networking and dissemination events, transferring gained knowledge, since the objective now is to promote replicability by communicating obtained results to other companies and sectors. For example, many of the railway infrastructure construction operations are common to those that build other infrastructures, such as roads, so they can also benefit from the results of the project.
Anti-pollution measures, speed limits, parking restrictions, even the grey sky colour, and very, very alarming data. These are the consequences of the circulation of our cars in big cities. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), more than 13% of the polluting particles in the 28 countries of European Union are produced by transport, which supposes almost 4.000 deaths per year. Only in cities, data ensure that traffic produces the 60% of emissions to the atmosphere. How long can we continue allowing this situation?
However, not all cars are so guilty of these emissions. Only 10% of the vehicles that circulate in our streets contribute 50% of the emissions, according to experts. They are what we call “high emitters” (HE). But, which are these cars? Diesel engines? The oldest ones? The worst maintained by theirs owners? Not necessarily. A high percentage of owners of highly polluting vehicles are not aware of it. Many of them have successfully passed the vehicle inspection and even 50% of these high emitters have less than two years.
How can we find out if our car is a “high emitter”?
LIFE GySTRA project, coordinated by CARTIF, purposes identifying this kind of highly polluting vehicles and monitor continuously the evolution of empiric emissions levels to quantify the savings of emission volumes. This process will be possible thanks to a new technological development, the RSD +. For the moment, the intention is to carry out tests and collect data in order to launch a new sustainable mobility policy.
The demonstration study will be carried out in Madrid (Spain) and Sofia (Bulgaria), where the intention is to control the vehicles that circulate in both cities thanks to three RSD + devices, adapted to the requirements of the EU in terms of NO2 emission control.
The public model in Madrid (Spain) is going to monitor 700,000 vehicles per year, with two RSD+ devices. The owners of the vehicles identified as HE will be notified to proceed with car reparation. With the repair of this kind of cars, it is expected to achieve emission savings of 14.8% (CO) and 22.7% (NOx, NO and NO2) of the total volume of emissions. If only the half of the total HE is repaired it would be possible to reduce CO2 emissions up to 16Mt per year.
On the other hand, the fleet model of Sofia(Bulgaria) is going to control a fleet integrated by 150 buses continuously measured. A recent study on buses concluded that identifying 6.6% of HE and repairing them their emissions were reduced by up to 84%. This monitoring program will allow higher emission savings, and fuel savings are expected to be 3-5% for the HE.
The repair of these vehicles does not only mean environmental advantages, but it will mean economic savings and the improvement of vehicle conditions.
If the project team achieves these objectives, it will greatly reduce pollution in our cities, even reaching to avoid episodes of high pollution and the restrictions, which mean headache for citizens and administrations.
The project is designing too an emission reduction policy that includes information campaigns aimed at population, some more general and others specific to the owners of the most polluting vehicles.
The project consortium is integrated by five partners, three of them technological and two from the administration. Firstly, CARTIF coordinates the proposal; OPUS RSE is the company that will develop RSD+ technology for remote contamination monitoring; and CIEMAT, the research centre that will calibrate the equipment and perform the characterization and evaluation of emissions. On the other hand, the Spanish Traffic General Direction and the City Council of Sofia (Bulgaria) will lend their support for the demonstration study in the cities of Madrid and Sofia, respectively.
According to the United Nations, in 2014 more than half of the world’s population was living in urban areas and two third of the world’s population will be living in an urban area by 2050 being Europe the most urbanized continent (URBACT, 2015). The forecast for 2050 in this case is that the percentage will increase up to 75% (Eurostat, 2016). Besides, urban areas are engines of regional and national growth as they generate 53% of gross national product (GNP) in low-income countries, 73% in middle-income countries, and 85% in high-income countries (World Bank, 1999).
Although the concentration in cities usually supposes an increase of density and less consumption of resources, cities use two-thirds of the world’s energy and generate three-fourths of the world’s CO2 emissions (Smart Cities Council, 2013). In addition, urban areas have important drawbacks, those being waste production, carbon emissions, pollution, lack of preservation of heritage and environment, traffic congestion, etc.
The traditional urbanism has not been able to give response to the current situation and problems that have arisen in recent years in cities, due to its complexity, diversity and uncertainty. Therefore, new planning instruments are needed, such as Strategic Planning, as an attempt to address the complexity and socio-economic diversity of our cities from a multidisciplinary perspective.
According to the definition of professor Fernández Güell, Strategic Urban Planning is “… a systematic, creative and participatory process that stablishes the bases of an integrated long-term vision, which defines the future development model, which formulates strategies and actions to achieve this model, which enables a continuous decision-making system that involves local agents throughout the entire process”.
To sum up, it is a deep study of the cities, in order to understand their current state, where are we?, understanding the past so as to help us to understand the present: where do we come from?, and, finally, to define a city model or future vision in accordance with political and citizen aspirations: where do we want to go?
Why is a city strategy necessary nowadays?
It is necessary as a way to achieve the sustainable urban development, understood from the three points of view: environmental, socioeconomic and institutional, as a global and systemic approach. This is considered as the starting point for the definition of the baseline situation of the city as well as the future vision. The current city model, as well as the way of life of its citizens need to be reconsidered, and cities need to find a way to regenerate themselves, with the aim of ensuring sustainability in the medium-long term, as well as being able to meet the challenges mandated by the European Commission by 2020 or by 2030 (40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (in relation to 1990 levels), 27% share of renewable energy, and 27% energy efficiency improvement).
Therefore, Strategic Urban Planning has become the best instrument to tackle the challenges that cities are currently facing.
What does CARTIF do in this regard?
From CARTIF within smart city projects, we collaborate with European cities that want to reformulate their city model into a model leveraging the convergence of energy, mobility and ICT to transform European cities into Smart Cities, through the development of an integrated strategy.
As for example within MAtchUP project, we are working in the development of an integrated strategy with the cities of Valencia, Dresden and Antalya, or in MySMARTLife project with Hamburg, Helsinki and Nantes.
Aiming a wider approach, we are currently working with municipalities such as Laguna de Duero (Valladolid, Spain) for the definition of its Strategic Plan 2017-2022, which will serve as guidance for municipal interventions and policies in the coming years.
Even though the term Geographic Information System (GIS) is well-known, it is possible that many of you don’t know what applications it might have or its relevance in the energy field. Put in short, GIS (or SIG, in Spanish) are all software in charge of the treatment of data containing some geometric characteristic and that can be reflected on a map in their precise position. These data can be 2D or 2,5D* (described with points, lines and polygons), 3D, or cloud points (LIDAR data). Moreover, these geographic data are normally associated to attribute tables, where information on them is introduced. For example, we can have a map with the provinces in Spain and in the attribute table have assigned to each polygon representing a province their demographic data, economic data, etc.
One of the most remarkable aspects of these systems is not only being able to visualize elements in their precise geographic location, but also that these layers of information can be overlapped allowing to visualize at the same time geographical elements displaying different realities. This is quite straightforward and we are very used to seeing it in phone apps, for example GPS apps, where we can observe a base map (a city map or a satellite image) and several layers that are placed on top of it, such as the name of the streets, stores, etc.
A part from being able to use these systems in order to guide ourselves in cities (which is no small thing) the potential of these systems lies in being able to perform spatial analysis, which would be impossible with other means. This way, we could have answers to questions like the following:
What would be the floodable areas by this river?
If an incident occurs in this area, which are the closest hospitals? What would be the best route for ambulances with respect to distance? And with respect to time?
Where should the stops of this bus line be placed in order for them to be spaced at a maximum of 600 meters? Which areas in the city would benefit from it considering a radius from the bus stop of 10 minutes walking?
How have forest areas been modified in a concrete zone? Is there risk of desertification?
These only represent a small sample of the reach of GIS, which proves extremely useful to carry out planning activities in a wide range of fields (risks and accidents, traffic management, transport networks, environmental impact assessment, agriculture, natural risk assessment…). But focusing on the energy field, GIS have also a great potential for the support in the development of energy plans, compliance with energy directives and result monitoring. For example, we could get to know which areas are in need to perform an energy retrofit. To this respect it is worth mentioning as an example the map developed by the University of Columbia on the estimated consumption in New York City.
Additionally, several different scenarios can be evaluated where the effectiveness of the different actions is measures or if a determined area can be supplied by other type of energy source (renewable, for example). Calculating these indicators it can be checked if the objectives imposed in a determined directive are complied with or not.
In CARTIF, and in particular in the Energy Division, GIS are exploited and their applications to support to the compliance with the European Directives in the energy field, more specifically to the Directive package “Clean Energy for All Europeans”. Moreover, special attention is paid to the study of the data structure and the standards that should be followed to assure its interoperability. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the open standards proposed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and also the INSPIRE Directive, which defines the infrastructure for the spatial information in Europe and which will be applicable in 2020.
This latter aims at harmonising and offering geospatial information in Europe in a range of 34 themes. Even though none of them is strictly related to energy (these aspects can be assigned to build elements, such as buildings (BU)), the study of the most relevant energy attributes is crucial in this moment prior to the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive, as it has been manifested by the European Commission when defining a project that studies the potential of the Directive in the energy field: the “Energy Pilot”. CARTIF, aiming for innovation and the alignment with the EU collaborates in this project interacting with one of the reference centres of the Commission: the Joint Research Centre in Ispra.
*Note for the curious: for example a cube can be considered 2,5D when it is defined instead of with eight vertexes with x, y and z values, it is defined only with the four above, since those contain the “z” value in contrast to the four lower vertexes, where this value would be 0.
In the subject of self-consumption there is a concept that we must never forget: energy efficiency. This efficiency must be understood from both the generation and consumption sides.
Let us first analyze efficiency from the point of consumer. It is evident that if my household consumes less electricity, the cost of my self-consumption facility will be lower. Are we taking any measure of efficiency for this to occur? A first step that can be taken is to reduce the consumption of lighting in the home. The change of halogen and low consumption bulbs by others of LED technology will allow us to reduce enough the electricity consumption in lighting. Another step that we can take is to replace our old appliances with others of class A +++ that have a lower level of consumption.
Efficient measures that are not always within reach of most budgets are to improve the isolation of our home. The insulation of the envelope of the building is fundamental. The use of insulation in facades, ceilings and floors and a suitable choice of windows can reduce the consumption of our building.
Other measures simply go through the change of habits in consumption that we must learn if we want to implement self-consumption in the home. The simple gesture of turning off light bulbs or electrical appliances that are not used, to avoid to leave electronic devices in stand.by (phantom energy) and to put the appliances in operation in the hours of the day when more energy is generated will allow an efficient management of our system. This can be done by implementing energy management software (EMS) in our home but it is an added cost.
If we are thinking about buying an electric car maybe this is the time to choose it with V2G (Vehicle to grid) technology with its Vehicle to Home (V2H) and Vehicle to Building (V2B) variants. This technology allows energy stored in an electric car to be injected into the electrical grid or to a dwelling or building using the car battery as an electrical storage system. In this way a better integration of renewable energies can be achieved in the electrical system.
Perhaps these measures will allow a home to consume only 1500 kw/h a year compared to the current 3000 kw/h of average consumption in Spain. This would reduce the cost of our self-consumption facility which would mean that many households will consider doing this installation in their homes.
From the point of view of the generation side, progress is being made by leaps and bounds. The efficiency of existing photovoltaic panels that use new materials with a longer useful life is very far from those manufactured 10 years ago and the price per w is lower, reaching values of 0.8 € per watt installed. Equally, the technology of the batteries makes them more efficient and with a greater durability supporting greater cycles of recharge and at a lower price.
And is the electricity grid ready for self-consumption? According to the operator of the Spanish electricity system the network is prepared for hundreds of thousands of self-consumers to enter the network.
What are the electric companies doing? Power companies are realizing that self-consumption will sooner or later arrive to settle permanently in each of our homes and that is the time has come to move ahead. Some companies start to market self-consumption kits, control systems or maintenance contracts that ensure a proper functioning of the system.
What is necessary so that everything starts to work? As easy as getting to an agreement point where distributors (power companies) begin to see prosumers (current users and future producers) as potential allies and non-competitors.
On the one hand, the electricity companies claim that the use of the distribution network should be paid not only by the current consumer but by the future producer and as we know these costs represent more than 50% of the current electricity tariff. But it is also true that companies are going to save the generation costs that are difficult to know at present.
But what would happen if a large number of users decide to become only their own power generators and definitely disconnect from the network? And it is then when the government enters and depending on the laws that apply and according to on whether they are advantageous for the consumer, the companies or both when the consumer decides.
