net zero

In Scotland, the 8th City Programme set to end this year, is using the smart city model to address issues like this. The project is rather unique as it’s not just focused on improving individual cities, but it strives to achieve joint initiatives, acting as a network that shares benefits evenly across the country.

One city, Dundee, is changing the way we think about cars and mobility through a variety of different schemes run by the Mobility Innovation Living Laboratory (MILL). The lab is working on a range of smart mobility projects, like an electric bike sharing scheme and corporate fleet sharing to reduce emissions and improve air quality. So far, results are looking promising.

By using six low-emission vehicles from the MILL’s ‘back to area’ car club, meaning users don’t have to drop off cars in designated bays, Dundee City Council eliminated

732 car journeys within three months in 2020. The economic benefits are also clear, as car club members who drive less than 6-8,000 miles a year could save up to £3,500 a year.

However, it's not just physically changing our travel networks which can revolutionise mobility, says Griffiths. Changing attitudes to how we live and move about a city could also have an impact. For example, as remote work has become more common since the pandemic, it's possible this could create large scale change.

‘The future of work will enable people to work from anywhere,’ he explains. ‘Maybe they don't have to travel as much or they don't have to travel during peak times, so you can reduce peak travel demand and the infrastructure that you need.’

Transport is just one part of the picture though, with opportunities to innovate various parts of city services, including energy systems. Stirling, another member of Scotland’s smart city programme, is doing this by identifying and mitigating energy wastage.

The city council has captured energy data through a centralised management platform – The Energy Hub – to monitor and review peak energy use in its buildings and track real time renewable energy generation.

Not only has this helped to improve energy consumption predictions, but it’s also reduced energy costs and decreased emissions. Efforts can be much more localised too, with local power generation boosting energy resilience and increasing affordability and accessibility.

‘With local power generation, even if you just think about solar panels on rooves, that's an element where people are shifting the mix,’ says Griffiths. ‘In many ways the transition towards producing power more locally has already happened.’

City improvements can be difficult to achieve, as sprawling urban environments already have so much infrastructure in place. One benefit of the smart city model is that it encourages innovation and delivers city improvements without huge, costly construction works. ‘In Europe, cities are largely built,’ Griffiths remarks. ‘It's not like we can rebuild them. And so, some of the reconfiguration comes from putting a layer on top, and that layer can be technological.’

With the concept heavily tied to digitalisation, this offers an opportunity to see cities in a new light and to reform processes, so city data is more visible. ‘In the UK, there's absolutely no understanding of who owns the land,’ adds Griffiths. ‘It’s astonishing that this data isn't digitised and it's not consistent across different data sources. And so actually, one of the big benefits of the smart transition is it's trying to resolve this and get a much better sense of how the city works, how it performs, and where the opportunities are for interventions that can deliver maximum impact.’

The concept has grown in recent years, as shown by Scotland’s ground-breaking programme, with some saying the smart city market doubles every year.

The sector has grown to not only consider how technology can be used within cities but also how to make them work better for people. ‘From my point of view, I would say the smart transition is about unlocking places which are just generally better for people to live in,’ says Griffiths.

Where smart cities will go in the future is yet to be discovered, but what’s clear is that the concept can help local authorities to amplify and realise ambitions for cleaner air.