The Smart Cities Council, an
industry coalition to improve the livability, workability and sustainability of
the world’s cities, recently announced the Smart Cities Financing Guide.
This new resource helps cities understand the financing options available for
investments in smart technologies. Developed
for the Council by the Center for Urban Innovation at Arizona State University,
the Financing Guide outlines
28 of the most promising financing tools for urban infrastructure enhancements,
including some techniques that do not require any upfront money from a city. It
“Knowledge of financial instruments and
the processes to engage in sustainable financing of technologies is vital, yet
few know how to navigate these complexities”offers criteria for evaluating
financing options and allows city leaders to differentiate which approach is
best for their project and community.
The Financing Guide is part of the Council’s premium resource library,
which also includes the Smart Cities Readiness Guide
that provides 27 best practices for launching a smart city initiative. Both Guides are available on the Smart Cities Council website for free,
following a very brief registration.
Schneider Electric, which acquired Invensys in January 2014, is an Associate Partner of the Smart
Cities Council.
When
the City of Bremen needed to modernize the heating systems in several of its
buildings, it analyzed the project and realized an opportunity.
Besides improving energy efficiency, there was the potential to implement a new
building management system (BMS) that would bring greater control and provide
far-reaching positive effects across the city’s extensive portfolio of
properties – more than 1,200 municipal facilities covering over 1.8 million square meters
(nearly 20 million square feet) of floor space. At the time, six control stations across the city were running a variety
of proprietary building control systems, making reporting and sharing of information in a
consistent format a challenge, and adding
new buildings complicated and costly.
