Urban mobility is paramount to address cities’ sustainable regeneration due to the number of issues that derive from a non-sustainable and non-efficient urban transport strategy. Urban transport represents almost a quarter of all the EU transport CO2 emissions. Conventional fuel vehicles contribute to the 40% of the city pollution, leading both to environmental damage and severe illnesses.
The challenge is to identify and analyze the best strategies to introduce clean technologies within an urban environment aligning with the city transport plans and policies and complying with the citizens’ needs.
Valladolid city has a strong commitment with sustainable transport and electromobility, as it is inferred from the list of measures taken at city level and their participation in a number of smart city projects at national and European level.
One of the most remarkable ones is REMOURBAN (REgeneration MOdel for accelerating the smart URBAN transformation) that is implementing a number of actions with the aim of boosting even more the penetration of electric mobility in Valladolid city.
Before REMOURBAN:
The largest share of public city transport in Valladolid is covered by the buses fleet, which consists of 103 PLG fuelled, 46 biodiesel, and one hybrid (non plug-in) Additionally, there are currently 466 taxis operating along the city. Among them, there are several hybrids (non plug-in) and others PLG fuelled. There are also two FEV, the first one operating since December 2011.
Mobility actions to be deployed within REMOURBAN project:
Though not fully deployed, most of the foreseen actions are already in progress.
Five plugged-in hybrid buses have been in operation for one year now. Two of them have been partially funded through REMOURBAN project.
Two FEV cars belonging to the City Hall private fleet are also providing service.
Additionally, a set of 45 fully electric vehicles (taxis, last mile delivery and other private business) are expected to arrive soon. To achieve this ambitious target, the City Hall has launched an interesting offer to boost the adoption of electric vehicles by these professionals. Interested parties will be able to apply as long as they commit to monitor the performance of their electric vehicles and related charging infrastructure. In return they will be getting as much as 8.350€ along 24 months.
Charging infrastructure has also been duly considered and the 34 slow charging points currently available all along the city will be soon upgraded and integrated in a remote management system to allow for seamless and reliable monitoring. Moreover, new charging infrastructure is being put in place to ensure fast charging to the buses and last mile delivery vehicles. In this sense, two pantographs (120kW) have also been installed at the beginning and end of bus line 7, and are currently being commissioned. They will provide the required electricity for their batteries so as to cover the inner area of the city in fully electric mode. The charging process should take around 8 minutes.
The freight delivery vehicles will profit from a fast charging station (50kW) that will also be installed in CENTROLID logistics hub. Last but not least, 4 additional charging points (22kW, Schuko, Mennekes) will be installed to provide charging to the taxis (not exclusively).
Monitoring actions:
A local ICT platform, in Valladolid, will be managed by CARTIF and further on will feed a global one for the whole project. Everything is being currently set up in order to get ready to register data, both from vehicles performance and from charging processes once the vehicles are in place. This is expected to happen by the beginning of year 2018 and will allow for two years monitoring (as requested by the EC).
On-board Units (provided and installed by GMV) will be registering a number of variables (speed, electric instantaneous engine consumption, battery level, instantaneous auxiliary systems consumption, GPS, emissions, etc.) that relate only to vehicle performance while on route. Additionally, data from charging processes will be collected by a charging manager. This will consist of initial and final charging time, as well as related charging energy.
Information from each monitored vehicle will come from both sources (driving route and charging process). The related set of data will be anonymized and processed by the local platform.
The final aim is to get valuable knowledge from electric vehicles performance in real conditions. All lessons learnt and experience gained will be transferred to other cities willing to adopt these technologies.
Traditionally, factors that were taken into account in manufacturing processes were economic, management, production, etc. However, this situation has changed in recent years. Energy efficiency and sustainable management are fundamental aspects that many companies have incorporated in their processes. Aware of that reality, CARTIF is accompanying the companies to incorporate in them the “Factories of Future” concept. An example of work done is the REEMAIN project.
REEMAIN moves toward zero carbon manufacturing and Energy Efficiency 2.0 through the intelligent use of renewable energy technologies and resource saving strategies that consider energy purchase, generation, conversion, distribution, utilization, control, storage, re-use in a holistic and integrated way.
In addition to that, REEMAIN project has provided us with the opportunity to expand our knowledge and experience in the Resource and Energy Efficient Manufacturing world. During the demonstration actions at the factories, the team has experimented energy and materials saving technologies and process and, of course, tested their effectiveness.
As the project comes to an end, we have produced a Best Practices Book as a way of sharing our experience with other professionals in the material and energy efficiency manufacturing domain.
The REEMAIN Best Practice Book summarises the key findings from our experience of over four years working on the project and are recommendations we make to the overall community involved in this kind of projects (designers, research institutions, factory owners, workers, contractors, public bodies, investors, etc.), in order to provide a help if some of them decide to get involve in an efficiency improvement project within a factory.
18 Best Practices are featured. They were based on our experience while searching and testing efficiency measures in our three demo factories: GULLON (Biscuit), BOSSA (Textile) and SCM (Iron & Steel). Three main thematic areas had been identified: Best practices on “design”, best practices on “Operation and maintenance” and “Exploitation & Dissemination”.
Each of them is presented in a short and visual way. They are composed of: title, description (being itself a recommendation), stakeholders, replicability, practical guidelines and things to avoid, impact rating, and finally the REEMAIN practical experience.
I have tried my best to avoid starting this post with the awarded as the most-used-ever sentence in this sort of texts that states that “buildings account for a 40% of the energy consumption and the 36% of the GHG emissions” but the fact is that it is good starting point when writing about buildings and energy. To tell the truth, in this field, with the unsustainable energy consumption rates, CO2 and other contaminants emissions, and their still too low improvement trends, everyone knows that a 40% is much more than we can afford.
When searching for reasons, it is more than evident that there is a moment in which the architecture is somehow decontextualized; losing its connection with the environment and nature, and the so called “international” style defends architecture valid for every place, where machines solve all those aspects that have not been solved during the design. But in 1973 a reality check came, and an unprecedented crisis saw the first laws about energy and the first awareness campaigns were launched. Once the energy “free-for-all” was ended, it was time to think of how to reduce the energy consumption but without affecting comfort in all its levels.
In that moment, after the effects of the crisis, architecture had a great opportunity to self-reinvent and introduce into its principles (those from Vitrubio, Le Corbusier or whatever fundaments the design process of every architect) the energy efficiency. Sigfired Giedion (Space, Time, and Architecture, 1941) states that “architecture is intimately linked to the life of an age in all its aspects (…). When an age tries to hide, its actual nature will be transparent through its architecture”. Thus, in my humble opinion, the last quarter of the 20th Century will be characterised by a strange mix of three tendencies: a magazine architecture far from understanding that the energy sources are limited; the housing bubble (this bubble could be issue for more than one post), also far; and a third movement that looks behind to find the origin of the architecture and searching to be adapted to climate while taking advantage of the latest technical developments. The two first (and many other factors, let’s avoid putting the blame only on construction) made that the 73s crisis has reappeared –or perhaps it never went– into what we know today as “energy poverty”, that has been set up to affect sectors of society that didn’t seem to be that vulnerable in the gold years of the bubble.
And, being realistic, with a necessarily low tax of new construction, and with a building stock that suffers the consequences of the above, make that energy retrofitting is one of our best “weapons” in the fight against climate change while, at the same time, one of the main opportunities for the construction sector, so hardly penalised in the recent years. But the problem with this is found on the “agnosticism” that has been set up around energy savings, which still are not understood as an economic, social and environmental benefit. It is, thus, our responsibility (read here the technicians of the construction sector) to quantify and valorise these benefits so that financial institutions, public bodies, companies of the sector and specially users, demand energy efficiency in buildings not as an extra, but as a must.
In CARTIF we have been working during years in the sector of energy efficient retrofitting and, specially, in quantifying and valorising energy savings to make of them a guarantee both economic and social. Thus, projects like OptEEmAL, about which we have already talked in this blog, work capturing all the knowledge that we have generated these years when developing methodologies to evaluate these issues and offer tools that support this change of paradigm: from establishing approaches of collaborative work and risk sharing during the design and execution, to the support in the informed decision-making to all stakeholders involved through the use of modelling and simulation tools.
All in all, we only aim at recover the relevance of the energy efficiency as project mechanism in architecture, what could make Vitrubio reformulating its principles as firmitas, utilitas, venustas et navitas efficientum.
‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another’. This is the most commonly known formulation of the First Principle of Thermodynamics. However, we often forget that energy is degraded to a greater or lesser extent when it undergoes any transformation in the real world. Consequently, the quality of it is not the same for every of their possible forms and neither it is the level of usefulness for a given process or application.
There are evident differences between the energy flow of 1 MWh of heat at 90 C produced by a biomass boiler and 1 MWh of residual heat at 40 C coming from the industrial activity in a factory. The first one can supply numerous applications (space heating, domestic hot water supply, etc.) while the second one cannot be directly used for almost none of these uses and it is often considered as losses rejected to the environment.
The ‘guilty’ agent that causes such difference is exergy. Exergy is a term of renewed relevance these days among the concerns of engineers, technicians, policy-makers, etc. which represents the fraction of an energy flow capable of producing work, of producing a useful effect. In other words, exergy is the ‘juice’ that we really should extract from energy.
Residual heat coming out from the factory (although to a lesser extent than that one produced by the biomass boiler) also attains such potential, and wasting it involves luxuries that our society cannot afford.
In this sense, how we use energy in buildings, industries, etc. should address two main challenges: (i) producing more efficient energy transformations that will minimize its degradation, and (ii) exploiting exergy fluxes contained in low-grade energy forms that are otherwise rejected.
In CARTIF, we develop our activity in line with these objectives through our participation in different R&D projects.
One clear example of this is the LowUP project(‘Low valued energy sources UPgrading for buildings and industry uses’), leaded by the company ACCIONA and where our research center plays a remarking role, both collaborating in the leadership of different tasks as well as providing our technical experience in simulation, control, monitoring and instrumentation of energy systems.
The LowUP project is developing 3 efficient alternative systems to supply heating and cooling for building and industries, based on the use of renewable free energy and heat recovery from low-grade residual energy sources that are currently wasted. The 3 systems will be tested through 4 demonstrations in relevant environments. It involves the participation of 17 diverse partners from 7 countries seeking for the improvement and integration of several individual systems for energy production, storage and final use. As a result, these technologies will contribute to significantly reducing CO2 emissions and primary energy consumption thus creating greater energy efficiency in buildings.
After 6 months since the launch of the project, we hosted in our premises the first General Assembly of theLowUP Project, which turned to be a complete success. During the meeting, the partners presented the first advances, focused on the detailed revision of integration designs, the definition of requirements for operation, control and monitoring, as well as those first technological developments and prototypes.
Therefore, from CARTIF, we encourage all of you to follow our steps and do your bit to keep extracting the ‘juice’ from energy, without giving up trying to catch even that last tiny drop 😉
This question is easy to ask, but very difficult to answer. If a person who does not know about self-consumption is informed, explaining that basically consists of putting a solar photovoltaic installation in your house and to use the energy that the sun gives us to generate the energy we use in our homes, the answer seems obvious.
In addition the energy generated is clean, since we avoid emitting CO2 to the planet and it is also free of charge. But there is nothing free in this world, everything has its price.
Surely many citizens have thought of taking the step of launching themselves to the generation of their own energy. The European Union encourages us through the recent “Clean Energy for all Europeans” initiative. This directive focused at the period 2021-2030 aims to support initiatives aimed at self-consumption so that citizens are their own energy generators.
This is where economic terms of investment and profitability appear, leading the citizen to ask oneself the first questions that may begin to discourage him.
How much does it cost to install my photovoltaic panels? How soon will I recover my initial investment? What do I do with my surplus energy? What happens in periods when there is no sun?
Firstly, we need space to place our panels. For example in Spain, 35% of the population that lives in single-family or semi-detached houses has it easy but the rest who live in flats already depends on other factors ,such as, their neighbours or space. However, in these matters where everybody is benefited, it is easier to reach an agreement.
Overcoming this stumbling block the next question is answered quickly. For an average citizen who consumes 3000 Kw / h by year, their problem could be easy resolved with an investment nearly of 6000 €. However in this case, it is necessary that our facility is connected to the grid and we can discharge the surplus to our power company or take power from the grid in case of imbalance. If we want to be totally grid isolated, the figure shoots to approximately 9000 €, because we will need batteries to store the surplus energy or be used in case of lack of sun. The investment recovery could be in the range of 10-20 years depending on the evolution of energy prices, taxes on self-consumption and other series of factors to take into account.
Nowadays in some countries like Spain, with the current regulation it is difficult to realize investments in self consumption that are efficient, due to a series of obstacles that should begin to be eliminated.
Self-consumption is not just putting photovoltaic panels on the roofs, but opens up a wide range of possibilities that should be allowed. To photovoltaic panels can be joined by other renewable sources of energy that make self-consumption become in another source of electricity generation and it is, at this moment, when new alternatives and questions appear.
Why not exchange energy with my neighbours? Why not obtain a profit from my surplus energy? Why does not my municipality generate its own electricity to supply, for example, street lighting? Will it someday be my building of zero energy or energy plus? Will I be able to charge my electric car?
Response to these issues may allow that our investment to start to be profitable but not only from the economic point of view but also social. Climate change is already a reality and everything whose aim is focused to reduce the burning of fossil fuels will be welcome.
From the self-consumption can be benefited all energy system actors, from electric companies, manufacturers of solar panels and batteries, installers, maintenance companies, engineering research centres and end users. Investment is also in the long term, the future of our planet.
All these and many other questions will have a clear answer in the coming years when the energy models change and we become aware that the past was never better.
One of the most important challenges that our society must face is how to transform our cities into more accessible, sustainable and efficient places. Our cities are, at this moment, in the very initial stages of this transformation, trying to get adapted to the new social challenges of the 21st century. To reach this ambitious objective, our cities have several plans for urban transformation, whose objectives while very interesting and ambitious, are far from being totally accepted by citizens as these lack of an essential aspect: integration. So we still have a long path in front of us.
The most important premise in this transformation process is that a city belongs to its citizens. It is essential to reinforce this motto, so that the citizens are at the center of this transformation process. Thus, as a direct consequence, any action to be deployed in a city must answer to its own identified challenges, following a city-led approach. And these, in turn, must have been identified considering their citizens’ concerns in a participatory process.
It must be added that in this process there are very good news. In order to implement this necessary transformation, we do not start from scratch. In almost any medium- or big-sized European city we can find medium- or long-term plans in the main sectors that regulate our lives in community. These plans are related to the built environment such as urban planning; the energy sector, with the energy plans, renewable energy deployment plans or the environmental sector in which many European cities have their own Sustainable Energy Action Plans to reduce emissions and their strategies to adapt to climate change with their Adaptation Plans. With respect to fostering efficient and sustainable mobility, we can find Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. Finally, regarding economy and digitalization, we can find the Digital Agendas or Local Economic Development plans respectively.
On the contrary, the bad news are that all these plans are deployed in an isolated way, promoting very ambitious individual actions that pursue a high impact but lack of an integrated approach. Thus, the final impact is not as good as initially expected. The main remaining challenge is then to identify or establish interlinks and synergies among all these plans and this can only be achieved through a clear and well-structured analysis of the direct and indirect effects that each decision made will produce in the city and their citizens. Moreover, this integration would allow to prioritize all this actions set out in the existing plans following a holistic approach. The result of all this process would be a so-called integrated urban plan.
One of the most attractive aspects of the future cities is their transformation into economic engines, developing stable local economic ecosystems for investors and business. Ideally, this ecosystem will depend in a lesser extent on the exterior policies and will be based mainly on a sustainable local economy concept, always led by the city’s needs and strengthened with new digital services developed in a space of co-creation and co-design. Thus, again citizens are at the core of this process. As a consequence, strengthening this economic ecosystem and the industrial fabric of the city will increase its attractiveness, leading to the establishment of local talent and the development of new enterprises, especially under emerging business models; like entrepreneurship, start-ups and SMEs. This is the city business model.
The new generations of Lighthouse Smart City Projects, like our brand new mySMARTLife project, promote this new integrated vision towards a new city model. The concept of Innovative Urban Transformation promoted in mySMARTLife is based on the generation of comprehensive urban plans, which will allow a more efficient cityplanning, promoting the development of an urban transformation strategy based on strengthening the citizens’ engagement, developing a local economy ecosystem for the creation and maintenance of employment around the new city services that will result from the deployment of the integrated urban plan of the city.
The cities of Nantes (France), Hamburg (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Varna (Bulgaria), Bydgoszcz (Poland), Rijeka (Croatia) and Palencia (Spain) have accepted to be part of this challenge.
But they are not alone. Dozens of cities throughout Europe and the rest of the world are already immersed in smart city projects, benefiting from the joint effort of researchers, companies and municipalities in finding solutions to their own challenges as cities.
In CARTIF, we are currently working with more than 100 European cities through our smart city projects. An exciting challenge. Would you like to be part of this transformation?
