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The Topic: Future cities utILIty WeeK | 6th - 12th February 2015 | 13 • Belfast City Council • Birmingham City Council • Brighton and Hove City Council • Bristol City Council • Cambridge City Council • Cardiff City Council • Coventry City Council • Derby City Council • Dundee City Council • Glasgow City Council • Greater London Authority • Enfield Borough Council • Ipswich Borough Council • Leeds and Bradford City Councils • Leicester City Council • London Borough of Camden • Manchester City Council • Milton Keynes Council • Newcastle City Council • Nottingham City Council • Peterborough City Council • Plymouth City Council • Salford City Council • Sheffield City Council • Southampton City Council • Southend-on-Sea Borough Council • Stoke-on-Trent City • Swindon Borough Council • Warrington Borough Council In 2012 the technology Strategy board, now known as Innovate uK, awarded £50,000 to 30 uK cities to create step changes in exist- ing programmes for smart and sustainable solutions to their environmental, societal and economic challenges. Most of these cities then submitted com- petitive bids for future city demonstrator pro- ject funding. In 2013, Glasgow was awarded £24 million to support the execution of its plans and a little later, bristol, Peterborough and London were awarded £3 million each to help bring forward elements of their future city proposals. to document the challenges and solutions of all 30 cities involved, engineering consul- tancy arup was commissioned to produce a report, published in July 2013. For 90 per cent of initial submissions to Innovate uK, the future of city economies and environments were the top concerns, followed by transport, health and wellbeing and social issues. energy was the next biggest challenge identified, suggesting that while cities are aware of their energy security challenges, it is not access to energy which preoccupies them so much as their ability to control and manipulate it for social and economic ends. In March this year a follow-up report will be published, with particular attention to Glasgow, bristol, Peterborough and London. the report will also investigate the returns on investment from future city demonstrators. On the map: Britain's future cities "Utilities are gener- ally on the sidelines of a lot of the thinking about future cities. A DNO at present would not consider a city as anything different within their business plan – they simply rep- resent a large concen- tration of customers. In the future, cities as entities may become large demand and generation custom- ers who interact with the energy system in a similar way to large industrial users today – but with a much larger and more com- plex set of drivers. As cities establish local energy systems, they will be looking at how they interact with other vectors like heat and transport. As cities grow to understand and develop their energy resources we will see them taking on more city balancing services – essentially manag- ing a local energy network optimised for the city's needs. It remains to be seen how they will interact with the existing networks, but we may reach a point when we need to consider a compulsory purchase of DNO assets or flexible charging ar- rangements for city councils. This would avoid the expense and complexity of systems being overlaid and enable cities to take a more active role in dynamic, city-wide energy management." Colin Henry, business development manager, Siemens Infrastructure and Cities Smart Grid Division, UK "It's worth remem- bering that in the uK the original city power grids were owned, designed and built by civic authorities to meet the rapidly changing needs of their residents. as we look out to 2030 we can expect cities to continue on a path of significant change, including the re-emergence of energy efficient housing operators, both private and social. Many housing operators are already starting to become power producers with the rise of local ChP and on-building PV. When it comes to ownership, it's likely that local networks will become city or community man- aged, with the DNO effectively operating the 'trunk road' power system. to push the transport analogy, local operation will control the 'speed of cars' while the DNO sets the speed limit depending on what the various areas of the city are doing. I think it is doubtful that we will see a transfer of DNO asset owner- ship to cities. Future cities hold lots of opportunity for DNO's but taking hold of these may require changes to rules which currently prevent DNOs from entering into areas of energy markets." Steve Cox, future network manager, Electricity North West ViewpOint "While city leaders receive the blame for poor infrastructure, it is clear that they cannot deliver unless they work effectively with both service providers and the citizens themselves." Brian Gardner, senior editor, Economist In- telligence Unit Opinion: Better partnership needed what are 'future cities'? Future cities is the term used by Innovate uK, the uK's innovation agency, to describe its vision for cities as integrated systems, opti- mised for living and working. Future cities will be designed to cope with urban population growth, ageing citizens, climate change and the demands of shift- ing economic structures. they will incorporate smart and sustainable technologies including: electrified or automated transport; distrib- uted energy generation and stor- age; ubiquitous sensors for asset monitoring, demand aggregation and distribution tools; multi- functional water management facilities; dynamic water networks; and service drones. For utilities, future cities pose big challenges around the inter- face of electricity, heat and water systems with broader social, eco- nomic and environmental trends. ViewpOint