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Smart Cities – Does Smart mean Sustainable?
Alice Cowman
CEBC Program Manager
Clean Energy Business Council (CEBC)
Email: alice@cleanenergybusinesscouncil.com
Smart Cities’ is definitely the new buzz concept
around town, especially in light of Dubai’s successful
2020 EXPO bid. Smart as a word itself is interesting.
It is politically neutral unlike the left-leaning
connotations of ‘green’ and appeals to a broad
audience. Who doesn’t want to be smart? It’s a
marketer’s dream! For urban spaces, it is the new
standard to be measured by.
However, when you ask different companies what
smart means, they will come up with an array of
different answers. What is smart really? Is it all about
IT and the collection of information? From Clean
Energy Business Council’s perspective, we are most
concerned with whether smart growth is sustainable
growth? In June 2013, the Heinrich Boll Foundation
released a book entitled Smart Growth: The Green
Revolution, the basic premise of which is that smart
growth can only be green growth. Transformation of
our energy production systems and more efficiency
energy usage and consumption are key to this smart
growth. 1 We of course vehemently agree but what are
the smart solutions that the clean energy industry
has available?
1
http://www.boell.org/climate-transatlantic/index-394.html
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Smart Grid
The smart grid concept has been around a lot longer
than the smart city phrase. The end game is to make
generation, transmission and distribution more
efficient, more reliable and more sustainable. There
are a number of aspects to this. The most basic is
making the existing grid more efficient. In many
cases, grid systems have been around for decades
and efficiency can be improved through upgrading
of equipment and loss prevention.
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However, it is information technology that is getting
everyone really excited about the future potential in
this area.
The ability to collect information along the grid
from the big power stations, through the substations
and down to the consumer level and using that
information to provide energy in a more efficient
and economical manner is the future. Once this
information is collected and analyzed, it allows
utilities to know their system intimately down to the
individual consumer. Power supply can be matched
more exactly to power demand and existing power
plants can be used more effectively. In particular,
when it comes to intermittent renewable energy
sources, the supply can be modeled and incorporated
into overall energy planning in a way that ensures
that these renewable sources are maximized.
Smart Meters are part of this grid revolution. They
are two-way information devices that allow real time
recording of information at the household level. This
can communicate information to the utility but also
to the consumer. Smart meters alone will not create a
more sustainable usage of energy but if the consumer
is educated to read and use that information to alter
behavior, you can start to move towards cleaner use
of power. Demand response where customers are
incentivized to lower their demand for electricity
during peak demand hours is an important
example of this. Additionally, smart meters will
allow consumers to generated their own power and
measure the supply that they feed back into the grid.
This becomes important when distributed renewable
energy becomes part of the mix as discussed below.
Commercially, no one company has all the answers
for smart grids. This is really interesting as in this
very competitive environment; companies have to
partner with each other to maximize their potential
to find the best solutions for utilities. In a recent
report by Navigant research, the top 10 vendors of
smart city solutions are listed. IBM, CISCO and
Schneider topped the board. 2 However, each of these
companies needs to work with each other and some
2.
Issue 8, May 2014
globally have already formed partnership agreements.
For example, CISCO can collect the information
but IBM needs to analyze it and Schneider needs
to practically provide the equipment to deliver the
solutions to the utilities. This brave new world may
involve people working together in a way that have
not had to in the past.
On the negative side, this incorporation of the grid
into one internet system has also raised concerns
about security. In the past, an attack on one area of
the grid could be isolated but if everything becomes
interconnected, the whole system is vulnerable to
attack in a way that has concerned governments
at the highest level. Also, privacy is increasingly a
concern for individuals. All this information about
consumer behavior is very valuable both for good
and bad. Protection of this is vital for consumer
security.
Smart Grid is a complicated, fascinating concept and
if rolled out in the right manner will allow reliable
economical and most importantly, sustainable
supply of electricity in the future.
Sustainable Energy of the Future
New ways of thinking about sustainable energy have
emerged over the last number of years and these
have to be part of any smart city future. People have
talked about Solar Revolutions with the dramatic
fall in PV prices. However, equally as dramatic, is
a move away from centralized power to distributed
energy solutions. In the US, one rooftop solar system
is being installed every four minutes. 3 Dubai has
firmly included rooftop solar as part of its smart city
offering. 4 However, this will change how the gird
operates and manages power. It will move power
away from the centralized power station model
to give more power to the consumer. Valuation of
this power is becoming a big issue in the states as
utilities have already invested heavily in centralized
grid systems and decentralized power may mean
that the money they spent on these systems will
not be recovered from consumers as they move
http://www.navigantresearch.com/research/navigant-research-leaderboard-report-smart-city-suppliers
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/america-installs-a-solar-system-every-four-minutes
4.
http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/free-wi-fi-and-parking-app-among-plans-to-transform-dubai-into-a-smart-city
3.
A Magazine for the
Environmental Center for Arab Towns
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towards self-generation. 5 However, like the telecom
companies before them when mobile phones took
over from landlines, they will have to adjust to this
new form of sustainable generation or go bust.
Waste to Energy is another fascinating concept that
is gaining momentum within the UAE. Collecting
waste and generating power from it seems like a winwin for all. However, this again, can be regarded as a
distributed energy source and, as with rooftop solar,
needs to be incorporated by the utilities into grid
management planning.
Finally, it is important to end with a note on energy
efficiency especially within the GCC, which have
some of the highest per capita consumption rates
in the world. Successful energy efficiency programs
in the states are projected to reduce demand by up
to 19%. 6 Within the GCC, they are well aware that
energy efficiency is necessary both economically (to
avoid buying increasingly expensive natural gas) and
environmentally. Dubai has stated that they want
5.
to reduce demand by 30% by 2030 which is hugely
ambitious in light of other countries experiences in
this area. 7 Better water efficiency will also help them
meet this target as 10% of primary energy demand
in the UAE is used to produce water through
desalination. 8
In conclusion, smart cities can mean sustainable
cities from a clean energy perspective but it will
require a lot of work and planning. The UAE has a
long way to go to make their cities both smart and
sustainable but the EXPO is a great chance to make
huge strides towards this in a city that consistently
surprises the world with its ability to get things done.
http://travisbradford.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/de-whitepaper-final-0426.pdf
See Vaidyanathan et al, Overcoming Market Barriers and Using Market Forces to Advance Energy Efficiency, March 18th
2013. See http://aceee.org/research‐report/e136
7.
http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-111/issue-4c/general-interest/new-uae-energy-minister-seeks-energy-efficiency.html
8.
http://www.cleanenergybusinesscouncil.com/resources/files/Energy-and-Water-in-MENA-2.pdf
6.
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