Bristol Council Wins EU Funding For Green Projects

Bristol City Council has won more than £300,000 in funding from the European Union as part of its Smart City Programme.

Essentially the funding will be used from the New Year and will be invested into two projects involving green technology, specifically energy saving and ICT.

The first project involves creating a model in order to monitor and measure energy usage within public buildings such as schools or libraries. The council said that it is partnering with a unnamed  ‘British systems manufacturer’, as well as 30 other partners including tech giants IBM and Cisco.

EU Funding

Meanwhile the second project involves online tools for electric cars and vehicles in Bristol.

These online web tools will apparently be able to provide important information for those people using electric vehicles, including charging locations and links to public transport options.

In the spring, council leader Barbara Janke launched the first electric car charging units in Bristol, located in city council car parks.

“This recognition by the EU of Bristol’s pioneering work on the importance of green technology is very welcome,” said Janke. “This is exactly why we commissioned one of the UK’s leading experts, Dr Chris Tuppen, to recommend how Bristol can take forward this agenda.”

Smart Cities

“His report shows that there are real benefits to be gained in terms of reducing our emissions through the use of user-friendly data and technology,” she added. “The more information that we have as consumers, the more likely it is that we choose to go green and save energy.”

Dr Tuppen’s report recommended three key areas as a focus for Bristol’s smart city work: smart grid and meters, smart transport and smart data.

“Smart cities will rely on high quality information streams which are used for everything from effective energy management to integrated transport systems,” said Dr Tuppen. “This data will also need to be presented to users in simple and engaging ways. This new funding will help Bristol develop the necessary systems and help it on its path to becoming one of Europe’s leading smart cities.”

Dr Tuppen is a well known figure in promoting sustainability and was previously BT’s head of Sustainable Development and Corporate Accountability, before he retired.

In January 2008 Dr Tuppen was named by a special Guardian newspaper panel of prominent environmental figures as one of the 50 people who could save the planet from climatic disaster.

The Smart City programme in Bristol is not the first innovative project from Bristol City Council.

Last September for example the council told eWEEK Europe that it was considering a scheme which could see it adopt open source alongside existing Microsoft software.