Better cities

Since the energy revolution ENGIE is engaged on territories to energize them and has successfully partner with their various stakeholders in particular with Cities. Those are committed to be at the forefront of tackling climate change while half of the world’s population, 75% of its energy consumption and 80% of CO2 emissions will come from urban area by 2050.

Cities are at the heart of the global energy transition and  want to move to a Zero-Carbon Future, but massive complexity is preventing it from happening at speed and scale. Moreover, as a complex environment, this decarbonisation goal need to be addressed globally in tackling all the components of the cities: energy generation and supply, mobility, infrastructures etc.

From energy infrastructures, ENGIE has expand its know-how along the whole value chain from strategic advisory, engineering and design to construction ,operation and maintenance and energy services delivery.

This unique know-how make us able to partner with Cities and provide them an integrated solution from power generation to operation and maintenance and  to all where the group has also set a wide range of capabilities toward complex solutions. We target to set at industrial scale a tailor made combination of industrial components.

Our ambition is to be the leader in zero carbon transition for territories, naturally all our solutions will focus towards smart cities to help them to become more sustainable, liveable and attractive.

Our vision is to develop and deliver innovative and integrated solutions responding to the needs of cities to decarbonize their territories and improve their existing infrastructures

In the context of climate change, ENGIE has set a dedicated team at corporate level to support the 24 business units of the group to perform holistic diagnosis of territories , develop with our customers and partner how to design a better future . Through our integrated approaches, we provide effective solutions to deal with the challenges cities and territories face today : population growth, rapid urbanization, pollution, global warming,… given the environmental and societal challenges we are facing, we have to foster our role for better cities and territories and make a zero-carbon future happen.

If smart city is a great opportunity to meet higher citizens expectations for the place they live but also city administration to improve and upgrade their infrastructure while achieve the decarbonisation of their territories, it is also range of challenges for a group like ENGIE:

•  How to reconcile long term perspective needed for infrastructure scale-up and the short term momentum usual for technology.
• How to guarantee inter-operability solutions
• How to last and sustain the upgrading of implemented solutions and technology

On top of the cities’ infrastructure, a new one is emerging, the “data infrastructure” which will be the key enabler to sustain energy transition to zero carbon unlocking the Smart city advent. This data layer is linked to real infrastructure through a key component : connectivity.

If it seems obvious that technology as a mean is key to support those ambitions, a group like ENGIE deserves and promote robust solutions and standards in particular for this one underlaying smart infrastructure: lighting, district heating and cooling, mobility and by extent to IoT and objects connected and supported by « public » infrastructure.

Smart City, sustainable urban development, improving quality of infrastructures, quality of air, quality of life, … all these concepts exist and are translated into projects all over the world. More and more those ecosystems are moving, being more and more interconnected, aggregating different scales of stakeholders and territories :

Energy, mobility and the environment are being interconnected into what we call eco-districts, eco-precincts and cities. Concrete examples are what we are doing in Greater Springfield in Australia, a planned community with a population of 40,000 with the ambition of becoming a net-zero energy city; Ohio State University, one of the biggest university campus in North America where under a clear and fair governance we are leading the decarbonisation through solutions development for green mobility, district energy and integration of renewable energy. Rugeley in UK, where an existing coal-fired power station is making way for a new eco-town lots of cities and territories we are proud to accompany towards their carbon transition.

As we speak about a transition to zero-carbon “as a service” the vision goes a little further and ENGIE definitely has a role to play in finding sustainable and low-carbon solutions. This means adapting to each local governance, each regulation, and what in the private sector is called “business models” : Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), Concessions, new ways to deal with Real estate development…

Therefore, Cities expect in a short term perspective to :

• Guarantee of security and resilience (resistance to climatic and meteorological events, terrorism, daily delinquency, etc.). In French cities already equipped, the number of cameras installed has doubled between 2011 and 2015.
• Maximize the fluidity of mobility, whether collective (performance of public transport), individual (alternative fuels, no plugs) or soft (bike, walk). In the total urban commute in developed countries cities, the share of public transport increased by 20% between 2001 and 2012.
• Improve of the living environment, especially through a powerful and practical design of cities, the limitation of lighting pollution, presence of green spaces, the quality of air, the absence of noise, etc. The French Senate estimates the air pollution’s cost in France at more than 100 billion euros per year.
• Develop their local attractiveness, especially thanks to attractive property prices, safe and green energy, the absence of road deaths, quality infrastructure, night attractiveness with landscape lighting etc. In the UK, some ENGIE’ contracts (eg North East Lincolnshire) incorporate such objectives.