Innovation: Livorno embraces smart city solutions to save energy and cut emissions

Smart LED street lights, remote-controlled traffic lights, sensors and cameras for traffic management and vehicle parking and environmental monitoring. These are some of the technologies implemented by ENEA in the smart urban renewal program of Livorno that will allow total energy savings up to 70%, in addition to a CO2 cut of over 1400 tons per year.

These activities are part of the project ES-PA - Energy and Sustainability for Public Administration, coordinated by ENEA, aiming at strengthening the competencies of public administrators on energy and sustainability issues and build models to be replicated across Italy.

"Together with the municipal administration we are studying solutions that, in addition to economic and environmental benefits, will also have a positive impact on citizens’ lives", Stefano Pizzuti, Head of the ENEA laboratory "Smart Cities and Communities, pointed out. "In addition to being put on streets, high-efficiency lighting systems with luminous flux adjustment will also be installed in parks and on monuments," Pizzuti said.

The smart urban regeneration project of Livorno also includes electric vehicle charging points and first aid points, flooding monitoring sensors for underpasses, renewal of electric transmission lines, urban video surveillance systems and urban fiber optics, all coordinated by an urban platform collecting and redistributing data according to interoperability principles defined by ENEA. This first model of a smart city on an urban scale also provides for the development and application of standard tools and procedures to optimize the use of solutions available on the market.

"As part of the project we have developed an IT platform, called PELL, i.e. Public Energy Living Lab, which enables us to monitor and measure the performance of the entire digital infrastructure", Nicoletta Gozo of the ENEA "Smart Energy" Division pointed out. “Thanks to this platform, for the first time in Italy in a tender for a public lighting contract it was possible to engage in competitive dialogue, a more flexible approach reconciling public service with the innovative capacity of companies ", Gozo said.

"This model is a winning combination of innovation, respect for the environment and cost saving; in fact, the investments necessary to introduce the technological solutions agreed upon by ENEA, the Municipality and companies will be entirely covered by the companies themselves, while the investment costs will be recovered through the energy savings that the solutions will guarantee", Mauro Annunziato, Head of the ENEA Division Smart Energy, pointed out ". The Municipality of Livorno doesn’t need to make any investments, and the management costs of the entire new smart system will be 20% lower than what the Municipality currently pays for public lighting alone. In this respect the "Livorno model" can be turned into a national policy saving energy, environmental and economic resources, to provide the citizen with more services, improving life quality and safety," Annunziato concluded.

For more information please contact:

Nicoletta Gozo, ENEA - Smart Energy Division, nicoletta.gozo@enea.it

Stefano Pizzuti, ENEA – Head Laboratory “Smart Cities and Communities” stefano.pizzuti@enea.it