Royal Seaport awarded best sustainable urban development project
12/11/2015 16:49 EET
During the ongoing climate conference COP21 in Paris, the Cities Climate Leadership group, C40, awarded the Royal Seaport in Stockholm, Sweden, the best sustainable urban development project. C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. It connects more than 80 of the world’s greatest cities, representing one quarter of the global economy.
Many sustainable solutions being developed today concentrate on making cities more resource and energy efficient. Johan Ander at Fortum, programme manager for Smart Energy in Royal Seaport, says the high ambitions for the project have formulated within the planning process. All the areas it covers, for example energy, green spaces, water management and traffic solutions, have since then become standard for all development projects in Stockholm; thus enabling the city to become fossil fuel free in 2040.
Fortum's role in the Royal Seaport project is important. Smart energy is a programme which is run together with several partners and includes both behavioural research as well as technical development of smart energy home solutions. The goal is to enable the utilisation of demand/response solutions for households. Using both environmental and price signals it will be possible to study which ones are the most efficient. For this purpose the residents will also get an electricity contract designed to support demand/response.
Johan Ander is looking forward to the beginning of 2016 when the first of the 150 families taking part in the Smart energy project are expected to move in. “They will cook, have showers, do their laundry, watch films and in general do things normal families do, but within homes that are a bit smarter. With their help we hope to get data that can contribute to the development of other energy efficient solutions."
Royal Seaport district is planned and built resource efficiently aiming to minimise environmental and climate impacts. Special attention has been paid to safeguard biological diversity and other ecological values. Royal Seaport's goal is to become a fossil fuel free district.