GrowSmarter is a consortium project involving Cork City Council that recently won a place in the €92,320,000 EU Smart City Funding Call, with the help of The Nimbus Centre. The project is being officially launched in Stockholm this week.

The number of large cities continues to rise across the globe. In the future, such densely populated and heavily trafficked cities will be heavily challenged within the energy and environmental area in relation to the supply and consumption of energy, and by the resulting pollution.

GrowSmarter establishes some so-called ‘lighthouses’ within Smart Cities, which demonstrate to other large cities, how they – in an intelligent way – can be prepared for the energy challenges of the future. The lighthouses have chief aims: 1) to improve the life quality of European citizens, 2) to reduce the environmental impact and 3) to create sustainable economic development.

This is an EU Smart City & Communities project incorporating lead cities Stockholm, Cologne, and Barcelona, as well as several ‘follower’ cities including Cork. It is the first such project awarded under the new Horizon 2020 Lighthouse programme, and is valued at €25m overall, over the next 5 years for GrowSmarter. Cork will roll out initiatives in Transport, Energy, and Information and Communications Technology.

The project has aggressive targets including cost efficient refurbishment of 100,000 square meters of representative types of existing residential and commercial buildings; Improvements in the street environment with smarter lighting and better communication facilities; Reduction of energy use by 60% on the demonstration level compared to levels before the project was implemented. The reductions of Greenhouse-gases are slightly higher through the extensive use of waste heat and renewable energy sources. Reduce the emissions from transport by 60% in the chosen districts by smarter sustainable transport solutions. The project aims at saving 60 % of the energy needs for the demonstrated smart solutions thus significantly reducing the cost of energy. Combined, this will demonstrate the massive potential savings to the consumer and local authorities achievable through smart efficiency.

This success for Cork represents an excellent addition to the Cork Smart Gateway project portfolio, which targets using Smart technology to drive economic growth, improve public services and promote better engagement between residents, visitors and the Local Authorities. The Nimbus Centre played a key role in securing Cork’s inclusion in this project, and is represented on the Project Steering Group.

Visit the Cork Smart Gateway website here.