A Smart City is a Low Carbon City
There are many definitions of a Smart City. At Osborne Clarke we look at is as follows:
A smart city is connected, collaborative and sustainable; it aims to deliver a better quality of life for its citizens. This is achieved through the aggregation and interoperation of data, digital technologies, and more broadly the smarter way of doing things that manage and control our physical environment – being how we live, work and get around.
Key to this is that a city is not smart simply because it has technology or clever ways of doing things. The technology and innovation needs to achieve a valid objective for it to make a city smart(er).
Right now we are facing a global climate crisis. As explained in more detail in our Decarbonisation overview, the low carbon agenda is the most important and pressing challenge we face and so decarbonisation is the prime objective for all aspects of life, including how we live, work and get around in urban environments.
So here we are looking at how Decarbonisation can be the objective of focus for a Smart City.
Our Economist Impact report looked at the different technologies that might be deployed to reduce carbon in cities. We are now taking the findings of that report and looking holistically at how those technologies can be combined with other concepts and ideas to achieve a Smart Low Carbon City.
Our experience
Decarbonisation timeline: The road to 2050
Decarbonisation is the journey the whole world is taking towards a net zero emissions future. This timeline sets out the principle legal, regulatory and policy milestones towards that goal.