Urban Future Forum

Energy and the City

In mid-March, representatives of the worlds of politics, industry, science and civil society convened at a future congress hosted by the Frankfurt-based public foundation “Urban Future Forum” to discuss the subject of “Energy and the City”

The chosen topic could not have been more topical. At the time when the future congress on “Energy and the City” convened at Campus Westend of Frankfurt’s Goethe University, the events from Tokyo and Fukushima had already started to dominate the headlines. The public foundation “Urban Future Forum” had invited local and regional politicians as well as representatives of industry and commerce to discuss global energy trends and outline possible future scenarios for urban development. On the agenda of the two-day event were the four mega-trends of global energy management: renewable energies, energy efficiency, electromobility, and remunicipalization. Speakers and participants agreed that a change in energy policy was absolutely imperative and that local authorities would play a key role in achieving this goal. Moreover, in light of the events in Japan they emphasized that the necessity to rethink was now something that people themselves wanted, and a goal that could indeed be realized. Company representatives reported that some very remarkable progress had been made in this area.

Over the coming years, Mainova, one of Germany’s largest energy suppliers and headquartered in Frankfurt, is going to invest 500 million euros in renewables and 600 million euros in network grids – this equals about half of the company’s total assets. ABG Frankfurt Holding, with 80,000 rental units Frankfurt’s largest housing association, identified the trend at an early date and has since made massive efforts to make its property energy efficient using cutting-edge technology. Since 1999, the association has developed and built more than 100,000 square meters of living space in line with the low-CO₂ zero-energy standard. The two companies are majority-owned by the City of Frankfurt and are thus strongly supporting the trend for people to move back into cities. Local authorities are keen to play a more active role again and have a say about what goes on in the energy sector. And indeed they can – see above. “Citizen value” not “shareholder value” is the motto of the day.

An impressive survey was presented by Martina Klärle, Professor in Geo IT at Frankfurt University of Applied Science. Together with a project group from the Geo IT and Communal Technologies undergraduate program, she conducted a study on the “Assessment of the potential of renewable energies for the planning association of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main conurbation”. The result: 75 percent of 75 local authorities around Frankfurt could cover their power requirements from renewables by as much as 100 percent. The detailed results, which will be published on the Internet at the end of March, will provide a basis for decision making for local authorities. However, the study also revealed that local communities in non-urban areas have a higher potential at hand, making them excellent energy suppliers for the cities. Which in turn would boost regional industries and promote regional collaboration in metropolitan regions such as FrankfurtRhineMain.

Martin Orth