In order to have livable and functioning cities, municipalities must improve how they engage with technology, citizens, energy, and planning as smart cities, reached within an open innovation model.
The +CityxChange project is coordinated by NTNU with 33 partners, including 7 cities, large-scale industry, SMEs, NGOs, and academia. Trondheim Kommune (TK) and Limerick City and County Council (LCCC) as Lighthouse Cities together with Alba Iulia (MAI), Písek (MP), Sestao (SB), Smolyan (SMO, and Võru (VORU) as Fellow Cities develop feasible and realistic demonstration projects towards Positive Energy Blocks.
These showcase urban, digital, and energy transitions towards climate-friendly and sustainable urban environments, improved quality of life, and greener business development.
+CityxChange creates solutions for Positive Energy Blocks leading to Positive Energy Districts and Cities through (i) decision support tools, urban planning support, city strategy development, and transforming urban environments, which enable informed decisions to be made by all stakeholders in the community, (ii) an approach to creating a Positive Energy Block through energy reduction and efficiency measures, local renewable, local storage, flexibility and peer-to-peer energy trading and (iii) community engagement driven by the local authority and bottom-up citizen engagement to change people’s mindsets, and develop, inform, include, educate, and drive behavioural change.
The +CityxChange vision is to co-create the future we want to live in. The following framework is being adopted:
(i) Prototype the Future – Integrated Planning and Design
(ii) Enable the Future – Creation of a Common Energy Market
(iii) Accelerate the Future – CommunityxChange
This framework incorporates 11 Demonstration Projects which will be carried out in the Lighthouse Cities and replicated in the Follower Cities.
The 11 Demonstration Projects have the following objectives:
- Collecting data and providing integrated decision support to the cities (DP01, Model)
- Co-creating a Bold City Vision to plan, implement, replicate and scale-up to positive Energy Districts and Cities (DP02, Vision)
- Co-creating Distributed Positive Energy Blocks through citizen participation (DP03, Engage)
- Enabling innovation through regulation mechanisms (DP04, Regulatory Zone);
- Accelerating change and disruptive solutions through innovation playgrounds (DP05, Playground)
- Creating DPEBs through improved energy performance and integration with the energy system (DP06, DPEB)
- Creating the +CityxChange approach to community grids (DP07, Microgrids)
- Integrating seamless eMobility within the DPEB (DP08, eMaaS)
- Enabling local energy trading within the DPEB (DP09, Local Trading)
- Enabling a fair deal to all consumers through a local flexibility market (DP10, Flexibility Market)
- Enabling public and private stakeholders to invest in their buildings (DP11, Sustainable Investments)
These projects encompass the environmental, spatial, social, technical, digital, economic, governance, regulatory and legal aspects required to deliver Positive Energy Blocks/Districts (PEB/D). They enable scale-up and replication of PEB/Ds within and across cities and across the EU. At the end of the project all cities have made significant progress towards their PEBs, 2 are fully operational, and others are close to reaching a positive energy balance. Supporting innovations have been demonstrated across all cities and are expected to continue operation after the project completion, including strategic alignment work, citizen engagement and Innovation Labs, mobility apps, and ongoing investment and retrofit activities.
