Nottingham is leading Britain’s smart energy initiatives and has claimed eighth place overall in the second UK Smart Cities Index, commissioned by Huawei UK and conducted by Navigant Consulting. The report is based on evaluations of 20 cities and their strategies, key projects and overall readiness in using digital technology to improve crucial civic services from energy production to healthcare. Nottingham has built up a strong roster of smart projects and initiatives, particularly for energy, to help meet the aims laid out in its Nottingham City Council led Energy Strategy 2010-2020. Those goals included the city delivering 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, as well as reducing carbon emissions by 26%. Nottingham is powering ahead, in 2016 the city exceeded its 2020 carbon emissions target, the current reduction stands at 36%. Nottingham is now starting to align its Energy Strategy with its Smart City Strategy seeing the two as integral to each other. Nottingham City Council is a leading local authority in the energy sector; it has the first UK’s first publicly owned car park to have a solar canopy. Its Energy Projects Service is developing solar projects to fully utilise the Council’s assets and has a pipeline of solar projects to roll out across its estate by 2020 including more solar car parks. The Council is also investing heavily in reducing its energy demand and carbon emissions by installing smart technologies and has the largest carbon reduction commitment of UK local authorities in the Salix scheme. The council will soon be piloting cutting edge fuel cell technology in three of its high energy consuming buildings; gas boilers will be replaced with fuel cell systems if successful at significantly reducing energy demand and costs then this will be rolled out to many other buildings across the city.
My Nottingham News 23rd Oct 2017 read more »
