Smart Cities Initiative: how to foster a quick transition towards local sustainable energy systems

The European Commission has recently launched the Smart Cities Initiative to demonstrate and disseminate how to foster a quick transition towards local sustainable energy systems. Within this initiative, the three main challenges faced by pioneering cities, are to reduce or modify the demand for energy services, to improve the uptake of energy efficient technologies and to improve the uptake of renewables in the urban environment. We find that enough resources will need to be provided to a significant number of pioneering cities, and propose that the initiative would allocate these resources through project competition, rewarding innovation, ambition and performance, which have been ingredients of success at Member State level.