City and Industry Energy Strategy

The European energy system is undergoing a major change. While cities concentrate 50% of the population and 80% of CO2 emission, the 20-20-20 European objectives can be only reached by a massive integration of renewable energy production and demand side management. Local authorities’ role in this transition is essential. Under the aegis of the Covenant of Mayors, thousands of cities throughout Europe committed themselves to design and implement a Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) to reduce their CO2 emission, integrate renewable energy and decrease energy consumption. On their side, energy-intensive industrial plants are encouraged to decrease their energy consumption, in a context of increasing fuel prices and polluting emission regulation.

Because of the complexity of the energy system and of the diversity of involved services and external stakeholders, municipalities and industries have difficulties to fully grasp the energy stakes of their territory.
CitInES project developped two decision-support software tools: Crystal City is dedicated to help local authorities to design and monitor their energy action plan; Crystal Industry optimizes the value of investments and operational flexibility for complex industrial plants.

Partners

  • 4 high-level research centers (INESCP for electric system modelling, AIT for building and energy infrastructure planning, ARMINES for long-term energy strategies and INRIA for optimization algorithms)
  • 1 SME specialized in decision-support software in the Energy field (Artelys, leader of the consortium)
  • 2 well-known industrial groups (Schneider Electric for its expertise in electric systems; TUPRAS, Turkish refineries as end-user) and 1 national company (ERVET for its expertise in energy processes)
  • 2 large cities (Cesena and Bologna as end-users).

Solutions for my city

You are a municipality with a SEAP already implemented and in its monitoring phase, or you are planning to have one, and you need a tool adapted to these purposes.

Crystal City will help you:

  • Design or revise/update your SEAP
  • Monitor your SEAP implementation
  • Build the support of all stakeholders

SEAP implementation is a continuous process with alternating monitoring and update phase and requires to involve numerous stakeholders all along. Crystal City is a strategic and innovative tool that fits into this feedback loop process  and allows to gather data from and present estimated SEAP impacts to the adequate stakeholders.

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Solutions for my industry

As a manager of complex energy plant, you may need to know whether your investments will help you reduce energy costs considering your operational constraints.

Crystal Industry is a decision-support tool which models your plants and constraints, and generates optimized management strategies, simulating current and new strategies to estimate their respective efficiency.

Crystal Industry can be used to help industrial operators:

  • Refine their understanding of the dynamics and economics of their energy systems.
  • Design new energy-efficient management strategies.
  • Evaluate the economic and environmental impacts of new investment projects.
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Experimentation

You may be an industrial or a city authority and EU 2020 strategy increased your awareness about Energy Efficiency.

 

  • Industries are eager to get a tool that allows them to be more efficient while reducing their environmental emissions.

Tupras Group (oil) has experimented Crystal Industry in its refinery, in Izmit (Turkey)

 

  • Cities need to rationalize their energy supplies, be more cost-efficient and promote their actions towards their citizens.

Bologna and Cesena, in Italy, tested Crystal City.

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