Eurocities Annual General Meeting

Stockholm Nov 25-28

The Eurocities organization that covers a number of the largest and most advanced cities in Europe, last week had their annual general meeting in Stockholm during the Swedish EU Presidency.

The main theme of this year's annual conference was of course focused on the upcoming COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen and the working theme name was 'Urban Challenges – Sustainable Solutions'. (The entire conference is available on line using this link - http://media.fronto.com/streaming/eurocities/091126/Default.aspx – you have to sign in first, but then you are in there, really a nice solution)

The mayor of Stockhom, Steen Nordin (M) welcomed the participants and explained that a large part of the program was dedicated to a number of green projects that participated to Stockholm's nomination as the Green Capital of Europe. Eurocities president, Jozias van Aartsen from Hague likewise expressed the hope that the conference could be a clear sign to the World that as the majority of the global population is now living in cities, the cities themselves are not longer 'just' the problem, but very much important players to solve the global challenges and the global warming in particular, but also the key areas where Eurocities has been active and where 3 awards were due under the headings of 'Innovation',' Participation' and ' Cooperation'.

One of the most interesting and engaging experts on international Health, professor Hans Rosling from Karolinska, then presented a breathtaking tour-de-force of numbers to describe how the World has changed and how all our prejudices dividing the World in 'They' and 'We' were no longer valid.

Look at this shortened version of his speech: http://paulchaffey.blogspot.com/2009/11/hans-rosling-om-utviklingsland-og.html

Under the headline: 'Sustainable Solutions for Business, Science, People and Culture' the conference split up in 9 groups and went on bus tours to study practical experiences and cooperations between Stockholm city and private and public organizations.

For my part I joined the tour to 'World Leading ICT cluster' at Kista, which in fact I have followed from its' early beginning with Ericsson and IBM as the first partners. Now more than 30.000 jobs have been created in more than 200 ICT companies in Kista. Really impressive and a positive experience and clear signs that the crisis is almost over in Sweden.

The other tours were labeledFuture Suburbia' – renewing Järva, a suburb from the 60's built to meet housing shortage and now in need for renovation - 'Teleco

m for green Cities' – a Visit to Ericsson Headquarter also describing the Intelligent Transportation System in Stockholm, where IBM performed the coordinating role – the 'Intelligent Electricity Project' – smart grids, smart electric cars - 'Creative cluster'- sustainable design in an industrial regenerated area - Mobility flows' – showing how the public bus system was converted to Biogas, also descr

ibing the Intelligent Traffic system - 'The Hammarby Model' – Integrated management of Waste, Water and Energy to 'Heating the city' – showing how 80% of the heating comes from

renewable sources and finally 'Low carbon Urban Transport'.

It was a tremendous well organized 2.5 hours extension for everybody and it was really impressive!

The plenum meeting was then led by mr. Ballasteros from the EU commission on the topic of 'the Covenant of the Mayors':

The evening program called for a galla dinner at Stadshuset, in the Blue Hall, where the famous Nobel Price ceremonies take place. The evening called for a reward to the cities that had earlier been presented as nominees for the categories Innovation, Participation and Cooperation.

Winner for the innovation group was the city of Malaga, that had developed an interactive map in 3D to optimize localization of solar energy batteries. Birmingham won the category 'participation' with an interesting project on building an 'eco-village', and finally city of Dortmund won the prize for Cooperation by an impressive, yet low budget project on ' Consultation Circle for Energy Effectiveness and Climate Protection'

Friday morning program was dedicated to 'the Stockholm Appeal':

The mayors of the largest cities in Europe and the United States have co-authored a mutual appeal, "The Stockholm Appeal on Climate Change". The appeal manifests the signatories’ desire for the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen to result in an international climate change agreement.

The US chairman for the US Mayors Goncress, Mrs. Elisabeth Krautz already the day before stressed the dedication from the US cities to back the Stockholm initiative.

The Stockholm Appeal was signed earlier this year by U.S. Conference of Mayors President Seattle (WA) Mayor Greg Nickels, U.S. Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran, Stockholm Mayor Steennnn Nordin, and Mayor of The Hague EUROCITIES President Jozias von Aartsen.

The Appeal was presented to the representatives of the Swedish Presidency of the European Union, as well as the Obama Administration by Mayor Kautz and Mayor Nordin. From this ceremony we have the following citation from the Canadian mayor:

"U.S. mayors proudly stand with our European counterparts in asking international recognition of the role of local leaders in climate protection. At the forefront of creative strategies, U.S. mayors have forced our national government to act to combat climate change. To date, over 1,000 mayors have signed the USCM climate protection agreement pledging to meet or beat Kyoto goals. Mayoral leadership is a major impetus in climate protection," said Mayor Nickels.

The Swedish Deputy Prime Minister, Maud Olofsson and the US Chargé D'Affair in Stockholm, Robert Silverman, underlined the strong intention behind the Stockholm Appeal, and Robert Silvermann declared that his president and the congress this time would do it's utmost to reach a politically binding treaty in Copenhagen on climate warming.

And finally, before the forum reports, Senator John Kerry appeared on video conference to persuade the European audience about the good will of the Congress in Washington, where he was at least partly successful. We are all now very much focused on what will happen in Copenhagen but take it as a good sign that President Obama has declared that he will participate.

Stockholm's Mayor Steen Nordin will hand over the Stockholm Appeal to the UN Conference COP15 in December in Copenhagen.

For the full Wording of the Stockholm Appeal, see this link: http://www.eurocities2009.eu/pages.aspx?page=42

Intelligent Energy Systems

On February 24.th it was announced that IBM would join the so-called Edison-consortium.
The EDISON consortium (Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks) consists of IBM Denmark, IBM Zurich Research Lab, Denmark's largest (National-wide) energy company DONG Energy, the regional energy company of Oestkraft, Technical University of Denmark, Siemens, Eurisco (Plant Genetic Resources) and the Danish Energy Association. Due to the environmental benefits of the electric vehicle technologies, the research will be partly funded by the Danish government.
At the Technical University north of Copenhagen a large scale computing system will be established based on websphere, SOA-technology and IBM Blades. The idea is to use this to build advanced simulation and calculation models to determine the optimum time to charge electric car batteries given the surplus from electrical windmill generators. Denmark is one of the foremost countries in the World when it comes to deployment, production and development of windmills. (See Vestas homepage)

This is perfectly in line with the Danish Government’s drive towards a consensus at the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen later this year, and it also matches perfectly with IBM’s declared strategy to support green technologies on a World Wide basis. The Green Agenda at IBM was in fact one of the most solid outcomes of a World-Wide so-called Jam, that IBm conducted with it’s 350.000 employees and more than 400 private and public business partners and customers in October 2008. The results are now being launched as recommendations, programs and new investment areas under the Smarter Planet initiative – including the Green agenda. Read about IBM Smart Planet drive

Sam Palmisano already met with Obama and his staff (click link to see video) during the transition period to advice on how technology could help save energy and how this could be matched with Obama’s vision of a turn around scheme for the US economy creating new jobs.

IBM currently is running more than 20 energy-related major innovative projects around the World, and the first one that was announced was the Island-state of Malta, home of the Templar Knights.
Here IBM won a contract to supply the small country’s energy system with more than 250.000 intelligent meters with the intention to optimize usage of electricity, balance pricing with consumption and help consumers to time heavy use of energy.

Many more projects are bound to come up – also aiming at the consumption of energy within the IT business in itself. With a projection of energy consumption going up 10-30% pr. Year, even the current IT consumption at 2% of all the World’s energy resources will soon be very visible.
The Green Datacenter is bound to be a focus item for any large organisation.

Which Crisis ????

Remember July when the oil price reached 150 $ pr. Barrel – approximately as the same time as Senator McCain stated publicly that the US economy was as strong as ever? Since then the sub-prime buble exploded and stocks plummeted. Banks went broke, and the confidence between banks simply disappeared. It didn’t help much as US Senate couldn’t get their act together and as you remember, US legislators voted No for the first round of the salvation package.

This undoubtedly worsened the global aspect of the crisis to the extent that each and every country had to find ways to secure their own financial institutions. Ireland leading by a not-so-elegant rescue package where only local Irish banks where in a position to guarantee their clients deposits.

Denmark probably was among the most constructive to put together a package involving the financial sectors themselves, but beyond that point a carte blanc for deposits not only by private investors but also by companies. The Danish interest rate was raised to a level 1% above the EURO interest rate, and slowly the funds started to flow again.

This is a bit opposed to the melt down in Iceland, which to some extent had been expected sooner or later. As the total debt of the Iceland Banks extended to 8 times the Icelandic GDP, they sort of asked for it. The neighboring Nordic countries have extended some of their funds to help Iceland, but it will never again be the same. In spite of this risky business it did come as a surprise though, that Gordon Brown (which has scored a lot of ‘Browny’ points during this crisis) acted to protect British interests as he used the UK anti-terrorist law to nationalize the deposits of the Icelandic Kaupthing Bank in UK and with the 2 Bio £ captured, actually kicked the Icelandic state over the edge.

Following acceptance of final 700 Bn $ plan, by the US Senate at their second try, stock markets rose – temporarily. World market reacted positively for a while also after the G8 summit in Washington, but when EU leaders meet to combine efforts on bank crisis, it became rather obvious that it was more a less a question of implementing different national plans at the same time, so it helped for a while. But the markets in Asia still reacted negatively. Worldwide crisis plans face acid test in Asia (Oct. 13.)

Now after a number of terrible weeks, the stock market is down on average by 25-30%, still extremely nervous, Dollar has – amazingly – risen to an all-time high this year, and believe it or not, the oil price is down to 79-80 $ pr. Barrel. And raw material index fell at an alarming rate not seen for more than 50 years. All of this are sure signs of a recession, and not only a short term financial hiccups because of some greedy bankers in US.

Now the real question is how well the World’s leaders are avle to manage and steer their way with the long term energy crisis that is not going away, even if the oil price temporarily has fallen back, between the riscs of rising unemployment and the long term wish and plans for a better Planet by reducing dependencies on oil.

Next year we will have the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen 2009. This week the EU leaders met to discuss a common position and their formerly accepted plan to reduce carbon dioxide by 20% in just 2 years from now. Initially both Poland, other former Eastern European Countries, Germany and Italy raised the opinion that EU should back off from this rather heroic plan – pressed by the upcoming elections in some countries and the fear of recession in most of them. But if one reads the results: EU Leaders meet to discuss position on climate before the UN conference in Copenhagen in 2009, everything looked fine on the surface. The problem is that the statement agreed upon requires that the EU leaders meet again and agree ‘unanimously’ on a position before the Climate Summit. So somebody kicked the ball over the side line to gain time. But no guarantees what so ever! (In spite of this statement: ‘Climate conference in Poland undeterred by current crisis’ )

It is interesting to note that both US presidential candidates seem to be in support of doing something, in spite of the US energy boards expectations this summer:

“However, unless the global economy is weaker than anticipated, EIA expects that the call on Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) crude oil will exceed OPEC crude oil production over the next 6 months. This market balance and the relatively low level of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) commercial oil inventories suggest some upward pressure on prices. However, if non-OPEC oil production increases as expected during 2009, oil price pressures would then moderate”

And it was likewise very positive to note that in the middle of the financial crisis in US,

US Senate approved package to extend loan to 18 Billion $ for promoting green energy. This is a follow up to a lot of warnings like this one: “ US faces long term energy crisis “

The next few months will see if we can get more countries on the move towards an agreement in Copenhagen while at the same time handling the financial crisis.

(If you want to read more abou the energy forecasts, this is the The International Energy Agency Outlook report (Sept. 10, 2008)

Sustainable Energy for 1000 years – Hot in Iceland

During a stay in Iceland last week I was taken to a Thermo Power plant 27 kms outside Reykjavik that demonstrated the benefits of a country residing on top of volcanoes; Orkuweita geothermal plant is a fantastic building and a not less fantastic story to tell: From a number of drillings down to 1- 1.5 km. beneath earth, the power and heating plant gets 200 degrees centigrade steam and hot water. Water, because the pressure is around 22 BAR. The water is separated from the steam, the steam drives a number of turbines producing 120 Megawatt. The hot water is used to heat lake water from Lake Thingvellir, and this is it’s turn used to heat the houses in Reykjavik and a population of around 170.000.
The hot water from the boreholes is re-circulated and brought back to it’s original depth to keep the pressure. It is estimated that this could last for another 1000 years.
No wonder why the Icelanders are fond of their sustainable energy – and that to the extent that they are not any more so keen on inviting in new aluminium plants as the real environmentalists think it is a shame if all this nice and green energy should be wasted on an industry that simply consumes what it can get. This will probably give Greenland a chance to attract more plants, but that’s another story! See http://www.c40cities.org/bestpractices/renewables/reykjavik_geothermal.jsp
In the meantime it is going to be interesting to see if Iceland can find out ways to export their energy without too much loss. When that day occurs, Scotland, Shetland, Orkney and the Faroe Islands will probably be the first to benefit.

In the meantime Iceland is aiming at attracting large back up centers from Google, Yahoo, IBM, MS and whoever is interested in being really green.

Co2 savings? This power plant/heating system saves at leas4 4 mio tons of C02 pr. year.