European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Smart Cities & Communities

On 10 July 2012, the European Commission launched the Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership. The partnership proposes to pool resources to support the demonstration of energy, transport and information and communication technologies (ICT) in urban areas. The energy, transport and ICT industries are invited to work together with cities to combine their technologies to address cities’ needs.

On 10 July 2012, the European Commission launched the Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership. The partnership proposes to pool resources to support the demonstration of energy, transport and information and communication technologies (ICT) in urban areas. The energy, transport and ICT industries are invited to work together with cities to combine their technologies to address cities’ needs.

This will enable innovative, integrated and efficient technologies to roll out and enter the market more easily, while placing cities at the center of innovation. The funding will be awarded through yearly calls for proposals for Smart Cities and Communities (SCC): €365 million for 2013 from the 7th Framework Programme as a first phase of implementation, with a special emphasis on ‘lighthouse projects’, and this EIP to be fully operational under “Horizon 2020”, the new research and innovation funding framework under the next Multiannual Financing Framework (MFF 2014-2020). However, a first wave of lighthouse projects will be launched as of now (2013) on the basis of a substantially increased budget. Rather than focusing on one sector as in the first year, selected demonstration projects will have to integrate all three aspects: energy, ICT and transport.

In the communication from the European Commission, it is stated that the acceptability of the new solutions in these three fields and therefore the early involvement of citizens and stakeholders in shaping them, as well as the integration of non-technological elements in the final ‘package’ are key to their rapid and wide uptake.

In practice it means that industry tests technology in a given city/community to show that the technology it developed works on the ground, can be implemented for reasonable costs and has advantages for citizens and the whole community. Many technologies have been tested by industry under laboratory conditions and now need to be validated under real conditions of a city. The projects therefore bring competent industrial consortia (composed of R&D intensive industries from the three sectors) together with one or two cities to demonstrate their advantages – so that other cities may follow to implement the same technologies. EU funding will be concentrated on a limited number of demonstration projects with high impact.

The call for proposals will be open to industry-led consortia operating in the three sectors: energy, ICT and transport. The consortia will need to include partners coming from three Member States and/or Associated Countries teaming up with at least two cities. These criteria should ensure that the demonstration projects presented and selected are market-oriented and that they can be replicated in different cities.

What type of projects will be funded:

• Smart buildings and neighbourhood projects. They can for example integrate and manage local and renewable energy sources. They could expand the use of high efficiency heating and cooling (using biomass, solar thermal, ambient thermal and geothermal heat storage, co-generation and district heating). They could also support the construction of nearly zero-energy buildings and positive energy buildings and neighbourhoods.
• Smart supply and demand service projects. Funding could be available for schemes which provide data and information to citizens and end-users on energy consumption/production and multimodal transport and mobility services; to develop smart metering and related services for energy, water, waste; monitoring and balancing the grid; or energy storage (including virtual energy storage)
• Urban mobility projects. These could be electric public transport vehicles (for example trolley buses, trams, metro vehicles) that are able to exchange surplus energy (braking and accelerating energy) with the energy system. They could be using ICT to manage energy flows or using hydrogen as an energy carrier for storing energy and balancing demand at city level for energy and stationary power – controlled by ICT using forecasts for demand patterns based on weather forecasts, event planning, vehicle route patterns, etc.
• Smart and sustainable digital infrastructures. By reducing the carbon footprint of the Internet, in particular data centres and telecoms equipment, including broadband; intelligent heating, cooling and lighting solutions.

For more information here:

Communication from the Commission – Smart Cities and Communities (SCC) European Innovation Partnership (EIP). 

Questions and Answers.

RAPID Press release(10/7) European Commission.