Where history and presence lead into a smart future

Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has a population of over 626,300 inhabitants and greater Helsinki does even count up to 1.4 million. Helsinki is Finland´s major political, educational, financial, cultural and research centre as well as one of northern Europe´s major cities.

Smart urban transformation for citizens

With a population of 377 587 people and 12 million tourists per year, Florence is not only a place with an impressive artistic heritage and literary history, beautiful landscapes, high-quality fashion and lifestyle, agricultural and gastronomy products, but it also has efficient digital public services, high-level industries in innovation and technology, and excellent training institutes.

Gothenburg took part in the CELSIUS project with several fields of action focusing on the construction of 900 new apartments, which are to be connected to the district heating system and used as small short-term thermal storage, for connecting ships to the district heating system when docked in the harbour, and for feeding cold water from the river into the district cooling network.

A mid-tunnel ventilation shaft on the London Underground and a UK Power Network electricity substation were identified as sources of waste heat that could be used to supply heat to Islington Council’s Bunhill Heat and Power heat network. As part of the CELSIUS project, Islington investigated how these sources of waste heat could be captured and integrated into the network.

The city of Rotterdam participated in the CELSIUS project with a focus on two interventions: development of an energy system in the vertical city of De Rotterdam and the creation of a heat hub aiming to increase the effectiveness of the waste heat transportation network.

The city of Brescia in northern Italy is part of the PITAGORAS project, which aims to develop highly replicable, cost-effective and high energy-efficient large-scale energy generation systems that will allow the sustainable urban planning of very-low-energy city districts. The project’s concept for waste heat recovery system is demonstrated in a real-scale pilot plant.

Laguna de Duero is one of the municipalities surrounding the metropolitan area of the city of Valladolid, the administrative capital of the Castile and Leon region. Throughout the centuries, what was distinctive about the area was its natural lake, which dried out during the 1970s. This turn of events determined the future of the city in a significant way. Laguna de Duero went through a period of growth and expansion, including the creation of the Torrelago district, which is the focus of the CITyFiED project activities.

Lund is a medium-sized university city with a research-intensive industry. The town dates back a thousand years, but the number of inhabitants has grown, largely during the last century, and a great number of the buildings from the 1960s and 1970s now need retrofitting. Almost 90 % of the heat demand in the city is supplied by district heating, and the hospital and some office buildings are connected to a district cooling network.

The city of Amsterdam has 825 000 residents from 180 different countries, who own over 600 000 bicycles. The wider Amsterdam Metropolitan Area has 2.1 million inhabitants. The city has a strong commitment to encourage green research, development and investment in sustainable initiatives. As a result, the area is enjoying a rapid uptake of electric transportation and a growing number of companies are developing sustainable products that influence global business. Amsterdam is exceptionally well connected, both physically and digitally.