Sustainable City Development: Implementation Practices in Riga

Abstract

To develop potential of the cities in the field of energy efficiency improvements and use of renewables, there is a need for new and more ambitious goals in line with the actual situation. Growing concern of smart city development and urban resilience has become increasingly embedded in urban planning, national security and energy policy. One of the main city documents focused on actions and measures to be implemented in City is Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP), which is the key document in which the Covenant signatory outlines how it intends to reach its CO2 reduction target by 2020. Taking into account specifics of modern cities and future city development at Smart City level the existing SEAP should be enhanced. Nowadays it is necessary to bring existing standalone energy actions at cross sector level in order to ensure urban resilience. Currently there are 3414 cities across the Europe and eastern partners which already have developed SEAP. The paper draws attention to areas with high impact to smart city development. In terms of Smart Cities the most powerful actions are those which directly affect at least these three sectors - energy, ICT and transport. Paper provides some good practice examples from the city of Riga. The losses of the heat transmitted to consumers by JSC "Rigas Siltums" - main heat supplier of Riga have been decreased by 667 thous. MWh or 2.45 times in comparison to year 1996/1997. Following the completion of reconstruction of the boiler houses, construction of a biofuel fired water heating boiler, construction of the biofuel fired cogeneration plant, installation of flue gas condensers for biofuel fired boilers at the DHP the share of biofuel utilization within the fuel balance of the JSC „RĪGAS SILTUMS” will reach 20.4% in fiscal year 2013/2014. The total energy produced from renewable energy sources since 01.01.1996 until 8.04.2014 is 920463.107 MWh. The project “Heat meters automatic remote reading system” proved to be a successful and reliable solution for the control and accounting of consumed heat, as well as related tasks enabling “online communication” with 8000 individual heating units throughout the Riga city. Development and introduction of electric cars and filling station infrastructure in Riga was one more step on the way to the SMART CITY status. Despite a fairly long payback period electric cars are quite beneficial solution for some companies whose activities are related with vehicles’ high mileage within the city as LLC “Rigas Satiksme