ecological awareness

Ljubljana is the political, administrative, cultural and economic centre of Slovenia and is home to over 280,000 inhabitants. Ljubljana impressed the Jury by the significant transformation which has been made by the city in sustainability over the previous 10 – 15 years. This transformation has been achieved in areas including local transport and the pedestrianizing of the city centre. From being a city which was previously dominated by car transport the focus is now on public transport and on pedestrian and cycling networks.

The city of Pontevedra created a car-free city model. The central idea of ​​the model is the number of cars needed for the proper functioning of the city is much lower than we think, but the efficient and dynamic operation of urban transport must be ensured by meeting complex needs. Traditional urban models mostly focus on motor vehicles, while pedestrians are almost completely ignored.

HiT is a Smart Grid housing project located in the City of Salzburg. The abbreviation HiT stands for "Häuser als interaktive Teilnehmer im Smart Grid” ("Buildings as interactive smart grid participants”) and refers to the smart integration of houses into the energy grid. It seeks to deploy and investigate a broad range of Smart Grid technologies within a housing complex. The project is trying to find the optimal interaction between a smart home in a smart complex and its inhabitants.

Sustainable Sydney 2030 is a set of goals we have set for our city to help make it as green, global and connected as possible by 2030. The plan will transform the way we live, work and play. Sydney 2030 came to life after we asked residents, visitors, workers and businesses what kind of city they wanted. People told us they wanted a city that cares about the environment, has a strong economy, supports the arts and that connects its people to each other and the rest of the world. Sydney 2030 is now the cornerstone of everything we do.

Virtual power plants pool energy from a broad variety of plant types and forward it to the distribution networks that are connected to them. To do this, they must be able to strike a balance between the over- and under-supply of power that occurs when renewable sources of energy are used. For this reason, most combined power plants are equipped with energy storage systems.

In Europe, more heat is wasted during electricity production than is needed to heat all buildings. Therefore, the potential for improvements in the heating sector is immense. By collecting the wasted heat from both industry and electricity production and using smart district heating grids, it is possible to save all of the natural gas currently used for heating buildings in Europe. This would result in not only monetary savings, but also in a consideration CO2 emissions reduction.

The Green Bank, which the DC Council voted to establish in July, will provide public money in the form of loans, leases and other mechanisms to help fund green projects that expand renewable energy, reduce energy costs and GHG emissions, and create green jobs. The Green Bank will initially be funded at $7 million a year for five years, with that money generated from the city’s renewable energy development fund, which was created for utilities and energy suppliers to pay into in the form of alternative compliance payments if they do not meet carbon emissions goals in DC.

CAPE, Community Action Platform for  Energy project will develop an interactive website designed to assess energy use for individuals and communities in Milton Keynes. It will provide data and therefore information for its users. The website will be made available free of charge to residents, community groups, landlords and local businesses. It will give them a ready-to-use tool to jump-start and scale-up energy projects, and to access opportunities for rapidly growing market for energy efficiency and renewable energy systems.

PLANHEAT will develop and validate an integrated and easy-to-use tool to support local authorities in selecting, simulating and comparing alternative low carbon and economically sustainable scenarios for heating and cooling. It will be validated in the three PLANHEAT cities.

The STORM project – Developing an innovative District Heating & Cooling (DHC) network controller to increase the use of waste heat and renewable energy sources and boost energy efficiency at district level. The project tackles energy efficiency at district level by developing an innovative district heating & cooling (DHC) network controller. The project partners have developed a controller based on self-learning algorithms, which is currently experimented in the two STORM demo sites.