Nottingham to lead the way on urban renewal

Nottingham has been named as one of three ‘Lighthouse’ cities in Europe and will receive European Union funding to launch a series of smart energy and transport initiatives.

The five-year, EU-funded REMOURBAN project aims to combine pioneering energy, ICT and transport solutions in order to transform urban life.

Together with the other Lighthouse cities of Valladolid in Spain and Tepebasi/Eskisehir in Turkey, Nottingham will introduce measures designed to improve energy performance and establish new low-carbon transport. Similar initiatives will be launched at a later date in the ‘Follower’ cities of Seraing in Belgium and Miskolc in Hungary, with a view to encouraging sustainable urban regeneration across Europe.

In Nottingham, the project will involve:

• Retrofitting an entire neighbourhood of 411 properties with external solid wall insulation and smart meters;
• The insulation of a further nine properties in a city suburb to a super-energy standard;
• Construction of an innovative low-temperature extension to the city’s district heating system to provide energy for four blocks of flats;
• Establishing a new electric bus service, with electricity to recharge the buses powered by burning city waste;
• Launch of an electric car rental scheme that allows people to rent vehicles by the hour from a number of points across the city; and
• A last-mile delivery hub with eight electric vehicles taking small deliveries on behalf of hauliers to minimise the number of lorries entering the city centre.

Project lead Dr Anton Ianakiev, from Nottingham Trent University’s School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, said that this project will make the city a showcase for energy efficiency, low-carbon transport and smart technology integration.

“People from across Europe will be very keen to visit Nottingham and see how these initiatives are being implemented, providing other cities with an intellectual blueprint of how it can be done,” he added.