Energy Efficiency in Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm through ICT and smarter infrastructure : survey and potentials

Internationally, Stockholm’s brownfield development Hammarby Sjostad is seen as one of the world’s highest profile examples of Sustainable City Development. Is its energy efficiency already optimal, or is there an untapped potential for "Renewing a New City", for example through the innovative implementation of ICT? This is the main issue of the study reported in this paper. In the mid 1990s, after some five years of comprehensive planning, the City's politicians and leading officials agreed that Hammarby Sjostad should be the Olympic Village when applying for the 2004 Olympic Games. To strengthen the application, an environmental programme was passed in the city parliament, a project team comprising representatives of the main city administrations was established, and the team was given the task of injecting the novel features of the programme into an ongoing, ordinary planning process [1, 2]. In 1997, the Olympic committee gave the Games to Athens. Nonetheless, the environmental programme and the project team were retained, and for more than a decade of construction the area has been marketed as a spearhead of urban sustainable development [3, 4]. However, evaluations indicate that its energy efficiency is average if benchmarked towards other developments of the same period [5]. Dispersion is wide, a factor three. As part of development, the national government subsidized a number of projects to support the environmental profile, some of them being targeted towards ICT and "smart homes" technology [6, 7, 8, 9]. This is interesting, since it is often argued that the innovative application of ICT should markedly increase energy efficiency [10]. In research at KTH, Stockholm, we therefore explore this as applied to Hammarby Sjostad: To what extent do systems rely on smart infrastructure to control energy use and its impacts – in the electric system, in the district heating? Does ICT integrate citywide and local energy system components through automation, does ICT interact with operators, managers or residents, informing or persuading them to be energy efficient? For the purpose of this study, smart infrastructure is defined as systems that make it easy for users and managers to keep energy use and its impacts low, without compromising utility or comfort Data is collected from documents and interviews. Eight real estate units with elements of smart infrastructure were identified. Thus, about 5 per cent of the flats have this feature, mainly to automatically integrate novel components such as photovoltaics or geothermal energy into the large-scale ordinary energy systems. There is also a single example of a passive house. This is the only Sjostad real estate unit to comply with the original energy objectives of using no more than 60 kWh/m2yr. The addition of local energy sources to a large-scale energy system influences the routines of operators and managers, introducing an element of smartness. It was also found that in a few cases, buildings were provided with “smart homes technology”, i.e. ICT that actively interacts with the residents. However, findings indicate that some of the technology does not function properly or has already become obsolete. In three cases, managers and owners are ignorant whether an element of smart infrastructure is operational or not. On the other hand, already from 2000 on, the district was provided with a comprehensive fibre network, which is still up to date. From this follows that on district level the potential for smart infrastructure is there, but as mentioned it is only in part utilised in the individual buildings.