Innovation project creates leverage for local businesses
“There are a number of local companies delivering different solutions to the challenges we face in the project,” says Lars Bern, Area Manager for Innovation at Business Region Göteborg. “The benefit for these smaller companies is that they will be able to refer to FED and say: `we have been part of testing this in Gothenburg. It works amazingly well and we could repeat this on a different market, in Europe or globally´.”
One of the strengths of the FED project, according to Lars Bern, is that it brings together a wide coalition of local partners, from the property owners Chalmersfastigheter and Akademiska Hus, to the municipal energy company Göteborg Energi, the multinational company Ericsson and academics at Chalmers University of Technology. The marketplace for energy trading is completely digital and automized and will be connected to buildings at the University Campus of Chalmers. One of the reasons for choosing this area is that it is outside the energy distribution concession, controlling who can trade via the power grids. Business Region Göteborg has the additional task within the project of stating which policy changes are necessary in order for the FED system to be exported to other locations in Europe.
“Our hypothesis is that there is an added value in creating a local marketplace for electricity, district heating and cooling. By pointing to the future outcomes of FED, we will be able to suggest how regulatory frameworks need to be changed in order to create incentives for investing in these types of energy solutions,” says Lars Bern.
The FED project is funded by the EU and one of the conditions is that the system is replicable and can be implemented in other areas, cities or neighborhoods. To increase knowledge and interest in the project, Business Region Göteborg includes FED in some of the about 50 international study visits they receive each year to showcase the green innovations of Gothenburg.
“The delegations we receive from all over the world are very interested in what we are doing and how they can bring this to their own environments and create the same values with the technology we have already tested in Gothenburg,” says Lars Bern. “From the perspective of Gothenburg, this kind of projects provides opportunities for us to highlight Gothenburg and what we jointly create here, as well as being tools for keeping the overall innovation level in the city up.”
Author: The FED project team