A city is more that just a place where people live and work. And as more of the world’s population gravitates toward city living, these urban centers must cater to their population’s myriad needs with sustainable solutions like never before. Recently, ARCADIS came out with a highly informative report entitled “Sustainable Cities Index 2015 –… Keep reading →
Only six years ago humanity crossed a remarkable threshold: more than half of us live in cities for the first time in history. According to United Nations statistic, fifty years ago it was 30% and a century ago it was 10%. Urbanization as the central framework for human experience and work has been driven by… Keep reading →
It is rare to hear “we can’t do that” in the world of information technology today. Given the scale of potential technology investments and the flood of resulting information the challenge today is more often answering the question “what would you like to do?”
Designing ways to help companies, institutions and cities answer that question has become the mission for big data experts at IBM, the company’s Smarter Cities General Manager Michael Dixon told Breaking Energy in a recent briefing. “The obstacles to progress are cultural and organizational, not financial or technological,” Dixon said. “Individual leaders are asking what to do with data and finding areas of resonance for their communities.” Keep reading →
In the noisy back-and-forth of the presidential elections, it can be difficult to remember that many other offices are highly contested – positions that in many ways could have a more direct influence on the energy business than high-profile but more general US federal policy or international treaty efforts.
Elected officials need to take down the barriers that make it hard for cities to innovate, C40 Climate Leadership Group Director Michael Marinello said in this video panel discussion with Breaking Energy. Cities have in many cases proven that they can move ahead with technology implementation and market changes at the local level; federal officials who can’t help need to get out of the way, he says here. Keep reading →
US Cities are incredibly diverse in their energy use and their energy politics, but many are trying to use the latest tools to solve similar problems with boosting efficiency and adding new capacity.
TED gave a recent prize to the City 2.0, recognizing that the “smart city” is a vital and important trend not only in the US but across the world. In the energy sector, information technology allows tracking of impacts on the grid, of timing for energy usage or traffic and tracking changes in ways that can allow for more-varied forms of policy and business responses to increasingly pressing problems. Keep reading →
Often implementing programs that create meaningful change don’t involve pure innovation, groundbreaking technology or original approaches. In many cases – in both the private sector and across regulatory spheres – the best implementations rely on learning from leaders and applying established solutions to new environments.
With cities driving the global economy and the world tipping further into being a more thoroughly urbanized place, urban energy leaders in both the private and public sector world are trying less often to “reinvent the wheel” as they are learning from what C40 Climate Leadership Group director Michael Marinello says in this video is a “network effect.” Keep reading →
It is estimated that 40% of US power consumption is attributed to buildings, and companies large and small are focusing on ways to reduce wasted energy in the places we live and work. With technological advances come new options for streamlining energy efficiency programs.
“You have to look at a building as an organism that needs to be monitored consistently because conditions change – like weather or occupancy. A building is a dynamic entity, you can’t just build it and walk away,” Dave Bartlett, Vice President of IBM Smart Buildings recently told Breaking Energy. Keep reading →
