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R2CITIES reaches out to the final conference of the CONCERTO Initiative in Brussels

November 8th, 2013

One of Europe's flagship initiatives for building and district energy efficiency innovation, CONCERTO, held its final conference on 22 and 23 October in Brussels. Co-delivered by R2CITIES partner Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, the event focused on the drive towards energy solutions for smart cities and communities.

Some 300 delegates attended the conference with a panel of experts discussing how to disseminate know-how from avant-garde communities and how to put this knowledge to use in the new EU initiative for Smart Cities.

There was much debate about funding large-scale demonstration projects in towns and cities. This included opportunities for Smart Cities projects within Horizon 2020, ELENA funding, and programmes for SMEs. As part of the third parallel session, R2CITIES Project coordinator Rubén García from Fundación Cartif, delivered a presentation entitled "Co-financing issues in FP7 Smart Cities projects" during which he explained the various options for co-funding the large investements needed for demonstration projects. He also presented the R2CITIES project before concluding that it is crucial to take into account building ownership when addressing the risks, costs and benefit of energy efficient solutions.

Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum is the coordinating organisation for CONCERTO Premium, a meta project serving as a support for investors' decision-making, and ensuring a sustained effect with regard to a widespread application and replication of results from previous projects from within the European initiative. At the conference, coordinator Valerie Bahr presented the topic "what Smart Cities can learn from CONCERTO". She likened these over-arching initiatives as concerts, saying "a concert is only harmonious when all of the musicians play in sync. Orientation towards Smart Cities would turn a simple concert into a whole symphony".

R2CITIES could be considered as part of the transition from CONCERTO to Smart Cities and as such it will have very obvious two-way links with these two European-wide initiatives. Fundación Cartif as R2CITIES coordinator along with Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, responsable for exploitation and market deployment, are therefore well positioned to ensure not only maximum capitalisation of the project's outcomes but also the input from the vast experience of previous projects from FP6 and FP7 is injected into R2CITES.

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