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of numbers to describe how the World has changed and how all our prejudices dividing the World in 'They' and 'We' were no longer valid.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

Green Cities - Blue Skies Ahead?

This year we are witnessing an increasing level of activity in all institutions and organisations that in some way expect to benefit or to be involved in the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen in December: COP 15 – Copenhagen December 2009

The objectives for the meeting are very high and the effort put into the preparations have been substantial:

• To get all the world's countries to agree on a global target for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
• To get the world's industrialized countries to take the lead and reduce their CO2 emissions significantly, while the world's newly industrialized countries and developing countries contribute to a collective solution
• To agree on a global climate regime which does not restrain economic growth and that does not distort competition on the world market.
  
  

The Climate conference is supported by the UN International Panel on Climate Control.

The panel does not in itself represent the latest research, and some critics of their predictions claim that they base the recommendations on scientific work that is by now 2 years old. Others, including the notorious climate commentator Bjorn Lomborg, claims that all the effort and money going into carbon dioxide reduction are more or less wasted. But these days the critics seem to become fewer an fewer as the Copenhagen Fever intensifies;

This month the Copenhagen Climate Council will meet and discuss industries’ role in supporting the sustainability agenda.

And also the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its subcommittees are, what the call ‘in full negotiating mode’:

“The Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) will operate in full negotiating mode in 2009 to advance work towards meeting their respective mandates. Important ongoing work under the Convention will also be taken forward in 2009 by SBI and SBSTA.”

But Carbon-Dioxyde submission, pollution and energy waste is first and foremost something that takes place in cities all over the World; so no wonder that this has become a burning platform and has created a lot of both political interest but also a number of real and promising initiatives forward. One of the first of this kind of initiatives in Europe is the so-called Covenant of the Mayors.

This project is strongly supporting the EU plan ’20-20-20’ – EU’s initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% in 2020 as a result of a 20% increase in energy efficiency and a 20% share of renewable energy sources in 2020.

(The big question is if this is enough to reverse the trend towards global warming!)

The Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), in Malmö, 22-24 April 2009, and discussed the covenant, adding to examples and recommendations and the number of cities and regions that have signed the Covenant is still adding.

Among other pan-European initiatives the Green shift Europe founded in 2008 pointed at a number of possibilities for city administrations, companies and citizens to contribute to achieving the EU targets – and maybe even to go beyond them:

Examples from the Green Shift proposals:

• Energy generation and distribution uses one third of all primary energy. Electricity generation could be made more efficient by 40% and its transport and distribution by 10%. ICT could make not only the management of power grids more efficient but also facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources. Denmark generates half its electricity through decentralised grids, with wind power accounting for 20% of all electricity. As a result, its C0₂ emissions fell from 937 to 517 g/kWh from 1990-2005.
• The heating, cooling and lighting of buildings account for more than 40% of European energy consumption. ICT can continuously monitor data to optimise lighting, ventilation and equipment performance and provide consumers real-time updates on their energy consumption to stimulate behavioural changes. In Finland, this smart metering encouraged consumers to increase energy efficiency by 7%.
• 20% of world electricity is used for lighting. Changing to energy efficient light bulbs could halve today's energy consumption for lighting by 2025. Intelligent light bulbs, which automatically adjust to natural light and people's presence will have an even greater effect.
  
  

The European organisation for cities, Eurocities: Focus on the importance of smarter cities to demonstrate the role that ICT can play in improving the energy efficiency of cities, the consequent reduction in emissions and working towards achieving a more sustainable low-carbon economy and society. Also to coordinate work on the development of a “Green Digital Charter” which would propose an action orientated and measurable framework and to support cities in using ICT to facilitate emissions reductions through improved energy efficiency and innovation.

In working towards a ‘Green Digital Charter’ for cities the main points are:

1. Getting local partnerships of key leaders and stakeholders together in each city to promote the new green agenda
2. Establishing a series of digital applications for improving the measurement, transparency and visibility of energy use and then involving local citizens, service providers and organisations to test-bed projects to deploy these
3. Ensuring the city’s own ICT infrastructure and digital services have the minimal possible carbon footprint.
4. Facilitating innovation to develop new digital infrastructures to enable low carbon activities and to achieve systemic carbon effectiveness
5. Encouraging and promoting low carbon activities through innovative research and development activities and deployment projects

IBM, one of the private companies supporting the Eurocities organisation, is supporting the climate agenda on a global basis, most markedly in the Smarter Planet approach.. Smarter cities are one of the key areas under this heading. IBM’s work in this area can be described in the following 4 different visions:

1. The connected city – making full use of telecommunications and mobile services to facilitate as well personal social networks as well as collaborative working reducing travel and increasing innovative capabilities
2. The sustainable city – instrumentation to monitor and control all sorts of submissions, energy consumption, waste and recycling. This is based on intelligent systems that will help monitor and also to utilise incentive based market systems or personal-incented methods to support saving and managing constrained resources.
3. The integrated City – Most cities are still today operated in silo’s and departments, and parts of the traditional city operations may have been outsourced. The integrated city approach offers capabilities again to have an enterprise view of what is happening encouraging optimization of city services and assist in incident management as well as crime prevention.
4. The entrepreneurial city – deploying ICT solutions that will enable cities’ eco-system integration also taking commuting and collaboration between citizens, work places and consumers’ sites into consideration.

Example: The EDISON Project in Denmark was announced in February 2009. The objective of this project is to make a proof-of-concept that wind-based energy systems are able to offer a major part of the needed energy resources by allowing surplus energy to be stored in batteries of electric cars in peak periods, by operating windmills much closer to predicted storms and to have an intelligent electricity network connected to neighbouring countries to level off production and consumption.

Another example is the Stockholm congestion/Intelligent traffic regulation system; Not only did the variable pricing scheme – combined with an increased frequency of busses and tramway – lead to a reduction of inner city traffic by more than 20%, the level of pollution also dropped sharply. This model, supported by IBM solutions, is now being replicated in a number of cities around the World – from London, to Dublin, to Brisbane.

For the upcoming Eurocities summer event taking place in Reykjavik, Iceland from June 10 to 12, focus will move from the overall political declarations to practical and solid best practices that can be copied between the member cities. The preliminary program can be found here:

http://www.reykjavik.is/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-3567/5628_view-835/

Greenland - icy Path to Independence

On November 25. Greenland held a referendum on 'Namminersorneq' – self rule. Many international observers seemed to be slightly misled by this and commented as if the Greenland community won it's independence from Denmark over night.
The purpose of the referendum was to obtain the Greenland Peoples acceptance of a new treaty between the home rule of Greenland and the Danish Government that will replace the current law of home rule from 1978. The content of the new treaty is to define the areas where Greenland step by step could take over the regulatory and administrative areas from Denmark, that is currently not covered by a treaty, which costs that Greenland will have to carry for each of these areas and which economic impact exploitation of oil (believed to be in plenty supply in North-East Greenland) will have on the Danish annual contribution to the Greenland Economy.
It also clarifies that Greenland will have the right to explore natural mineral resources.
But total independence is in no way just around the corner – the realities are too harsh.
The annual Danish contribution is 3.5 billions Dkr – about 590 Mio $, or one third of the Greenland GDP, 2/3 of the Home Rule income. Next year the Greenland fiscal plan has a deficit of 300 Mio Dkr, mainly allocated to investment in infrastructure , new water driven power plants, harbours and other items needed to attract mining industry. (Read Lars Emil Johansen’s comments to the fiscal law for Greenland for 2009 (In Danish))
So there is really not so much available to start financing new areas for many years to come – Police and Legal autonomy is estimated to cost at least 300 Mio Dkr, but the real problem is – as in many sectors – lack of skilled Greenland speaking trained policemen, judges, lawyers, administrators.
What was expected to improve this position has now been postponed for several years: The mines that would contribute to the Greenland economy by taxes on workers and spin off from investments, are faced with ice cold outlook: The Bloomberg metal ad mining index is down to 1/3 compared to spring time, the only working goldmine is closing down because of heavy deficit, and the Alcoa aluminum company that still has a LOI to start building an Aluminum plant once a couple of more power plants are installed, is faced with adverse trends, stopping new investments, closing down some facilities.
So there is not much hope for the Greenland self rule quickly to undertake new areas and being able to pay for it. Even if 75% votes yes.

So the referendum may be only little more than a political victory for the parties in Greenland that advocated for increased self rule. But as such it will be helpful for a more equal partnership with Denmark. The Greenland language will be the national language, Danish and English 2nd
and 3rd. Language. The People of Greenland will be recognized as a separate people according to the International Law. Even many resident Danes in Greenland voted for the acceptance of the treaty, and one of the stated that 'Now the handle is on the inside of the door, they are free to open it at any time!'. Some even expect the requests for support from Denmark from now on will be more realistic.

The strategic importance of Greenland has been clear since 2. World War – the Thule Radar is an important part of the US defense system ever since the Cold War and particularly since Ronald Reagan's 'star wars' project was launched. The latest treaty is dated 2004. A Greenland with substantial oil reserves would of course be even more interesting for US, and there is no doubt that the Greenland politicians are very much aware of their favorable position, particularly the more socialistic IA party would probably have hoped for a faster way to independence – but also very much aware of the risk of ending with a heavy embrace by the American neighbour.
But Greenland is also a symbol of the global warming – Al Gore was early to visit the melting glaciers, the Danish Climate Minister, Conny Hedegaard, enjoys showing her colleagues the glaciers at the Icefjord, now moving at a speed 20 times the speed in 1980'is.
It suddenly dawned on the Greenland political leaders that a part of the new treaty and earlier treaties with Denmark on the climate issues demanded that Greenland stuck to the Danish scheme of reducing the CO2 emissions. This however, may be completely impossible. Where could the savings come from once Alcoa's aluminum plant starts producing CO2 in a volume 20-40 times the current Greenland emission? As the Greenland Industry Association points out, Greenland has not yet become industrialized and should be allowed special treatment. This conflict is going to be interesting with an Obama administration in US and with Denmark hosting the UN climate conference in November in Copenhagen. From both sides the demand for CO2 reduction will be difficult to neglect.

And again, if the aluminum plants are postponed, and mines will be delayed for decades, the financing of increased independence is non-existing, and the best the Greenland Self rule Government can do right now is to invest heavily in education and try to become independent of Danish and other experts in key areas like mining, IT, transportation, construction – and administration.

The current financial crisis has not yet hit Greenland with any strength – I participated in a seminar for the ICT key players in Greenland, Nuuk last week and presented the overall problems with a particular twist on Greenland strategic options that are still open for discussion. The investment in infrastructure has called for the installation of a sea cable, and TeleGreenland expects to open this almost 1 billion Dkr. investment in March 2009. Still the radio stations transmitting the signals along the coast needs additional investments – probably around 100 – 200 Mio Dkr. during the next 5 years. This is a lot for a country of less than 60.000 inhabitants, and the political pressure from the Greenland Government to keep investing is enormous; during the last few years a GPS system for sheep farmers have been built up at a cost of 65.000 Dkr. pr. Sheep farmer. And still Tele Greenland has managed to deliver a surplus to the Home Rule – it’s only owner.

It is ironic to note that at the same time as the educational system and telemedicine suddenly becomes possibilities within reach, the politicians are trying to step in and open broadband connections to everybody as a low priced flat rate. It seems to be a recurring problem in Greenland where political participation in the major industries has been – to put it best – a very close alliance. In this case it would result in drowning the capacity and taking any sort of control out of a professional company management team. The price parameters could in stead be used as a budget support to education and health sector while TeleGreenland build up its capacity - and then eventually adjust rates downwards. Compare with the Tele Company in North West Canada that has been a heavy receiver of subsidies for decades.

But so far TeleGreenland has got its financing in place – next in line may not be so lucky – whether it is Royal Greenland, Umiaq Line, the construction sector, AirGreenland. Tourism will probably soon begin to drop slightly housing is still in short supply in the bigger cities.
In the short run the lower price of oil will benefit the fishing industry, but demand for fish is also likely to drop.
There is no doubt that even if Greenland so far is hiding behind Denmark, the global crisis will be felt. And the first victim will be the mines - and with the mines the hope of early independence.

But the Greenland people will undoubtedly struggle to protect their culture, language. If you have never really encountered this people, listen to this beautiful christmas carol performed by a choir of Greenland women in their traditional dress: Guuterput on Facebook.
Merry Christmas – Santa Claus is highly needed everywhere this year. But remember: He lives in Greenland! I met him at his home last Saturday!

Arctic Challenges (1)

In May ministers from the 5 arctic countries surrounding the Northpole met in Ilulissat, Greenland to try to reach agreement on the process needed to determine rights for exploration as well as rights for sailing in the arctic area; as a consequnce of the global warming, it is now evident that explorations for oil and natural resources would be only a matter of few years away, and as the polar cap ice cover will retreat, new lines for freighters and cruising vessels would open up for more traffic. Both activities are bound to have a huge impact on the very fragile environment in the Arctic. (See http://benmuse.typepad.com/arctic_economics/2008/05/representatives-of-the-five-arctic-countries-russia-the-us-canada-denmark-and-norway-meet-tomorrow-at-ilullissat-on-greenlands-baffin-sea-coast-to-discuss-their-territorial-claims-arctic-powers-hold-summit-in-greenlandafp-may-27.html )

The choice of Ilulissat for this conference is not a coincidence: The glacier at Ilulissat Icefjord is the most productive glacier on the Northern Himesphere producing more than 20.000 million liters of water pr. day corresponding to the City of New York's water consumption in a year.

It is a part of the World Heritage and Denmark/Greenland's 4th landmark on this prestigeous list. http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=1149

The glacier is running faster and faster - from 20 kilometres pr. year a few years ago to now 40 km/year.

The meeting ended on a positive note, in spite of the fact that US never ratified the UN 1982 Sea Convention, Canada, Russia, Norway, US and denmark/Greenland agreed to use this as a foundation for defining rights of traffic and exploration in the future.

As part of my trip to participate in the IT Council Meeting in Sisimiut on June 11-12th, we first visited Ilulissat, located 250 km. north of the Polar circle. A beautiful city on the brink of the Disco Bay. It is the 3rd largest city in Greenland, but with it's 3.500+ inhabitants, the humans are outnumbered by the sledge dogs. These huge dogs are out of work during the summer period, and they spend the time breeding and changing their fur.

The noice these dogs are capable of producing is unbeleiveable, so they are located just outside of the city - but for vistors probably not far enough. They are definitely NOT pets - each year tourists and children are attacked by these half-wild animals. In this case the procedure is that they are shot immediately. In winter time it is a real tourist pearl to sit on top of a Dogsledge - typically 2-3 meters long and drawn by 8-10 dogs. The leader dog is almost always an old female. A young male dog is tied directly behind her to ensure protection from the old 'rouges'. The strongest and biggest males are tied closest to the sledge beside each other to compete. The first hour or so should be awful sitting on the sledge; only by that time the air has left the dogs' stomachs and then the air feels a lot better !

During our stay in Ilulissat we took a boat to Rodebay, a small village with 50 inhabitants an hours sailing up the Disco Bay. This place - The Red Bay - was originally used by the Dutch whalers, who in 1600 and beginning of 1700 used the bay for extracting the whale oil, by then a very precious thing as it was lightning the houses of Europe. As Denmark started to exploit Greenland, at that time and until May 1. 1979 where the new law on Homerule for Greenland was accepted, a genuine colony with a mixture of nice preachers and rough merchants. One of these, Jacob Severin, manned his vessels, took 5 dutch ships as prison and created the alternative whaling spot Jacobshavn, now adays Ilulissat, in 1741.

http://www.go2greenland.com/pages/Settlements-and-Icebergs-of-the-Diskobay.html

Ilulissat has 3 hotels and a youth hostel and is a marvelleous starting point for Arctic ventures. Because of the reputation, the city is now hosting more than 20.000 tourists a year and it is beginning to take it's toll on the route along the Icefjord. (Seee the upper picture). The area holds old graves from the original pre-escimo people, the Saqqaq culture, believed to come from Sibiria. The current population comes from the Aleutian Islands and arrived only around year 800, aproximately at the same time as the Nordic Vikings reached the southern tip of Greenland sailing from Iceland.

Ilulissat does not any longer rely on whaling; A quota of whales are each year allocated to Greenland, but the main catch is shrimps and fish. Because of the content of oxygen in the large icebergs that are melting in the Disco Bay and outside the Icefjord, this gives life to plankton and hence create a very rich environment for a lot of fish - and seals - to thrive. But the global warming is also chaning the pattern of fishing: Some years ago the cod declined sharply, and now the shrimps are declining. This is a potential threat to the economy of the Greenland fishing industry. But more about alternatives in the next blog.

We left Ilulissat on a sunday evening sailing through the sunny polar night to Sisimiut. The traffic between the cities on the east coast relies mainly on this line, the Umiaq line, and the passenger ship arrives twice a week to the towns from Narsaqq in South to Ilulissat in the north.

Also Greenland Air is an important means of transporation, relying mainly on their fleet of Dash 7 - 4 engined monoplans with a very robust landing gear (compared to 'crash 8' )