Introduction
Worldwide evolution in the twenty-first century is putting a lot of pressure on developing countries for improving their infrastructure and progress rate in various areas. A large number of people are migrating from villages to cities. The rate of this migration is so high that by 2050, about 70 per cent of world population will be living in cities. The same holds true for India, as well. If the migration continues at this rate in India, we would need approximately 500 new cities only to provide basic housing to this influx.
With a high spike in the rate of urban development and the load on rural areas, our government has now understood the growing need for new cities, which can handle the challenges of urban living and become a major source of investment. The announcement of ‘100 smart cities’ by the Indian government falls under this category only. Therefore, ‘Smart City’ has become a current topic and a popularly known term.
This idea comprises human capital as well as technology for creating sustainable surroundings. Such cities work towards the aim of improving sustainable economic progress, building infrastructure and providing citizens with a better quality of life as they add to the process of progress.
The term ‘Smart City’ is referred to an urban area, which is technically very advanced with reference to the complete infrastructure, has highly sustainable real estate, communications and quite good market possibility. Information technology plays a major role in providing basic amenities to its people.
The supply and demand of goods in the market is the base of financial progress of smart cities. It is very difficult to attain the economic development as it affects everybody, including common people, businessmen, the government and the surroundings as well.
The revolutionising idea of ‘Smart City’ came up when the world was facing economic crisis. The year 2008 was the time of creation of this idea when IBM cast its deep sight into developing a smart city by its project ‘Smart Planet’ initiative. Upon seeing, this project, the whole world got captivated with the idea of Smart City.
Necessity of Smart City
Because of the increase in development, India’s urban population might (in probability) increase approximately to 600 million by 2031, which would be almost twice to what it was in 2001. Almost half of this population would be living in cities. Based on a recent report on Indian urban infrastructure and services by a high-powered expert committee set by the Government of India, the share of the GDP of the urban areas will probably rise to 75 per cent by 2030 as compared to 62–63 per cent in 2009–2010. This is the major reason why cities are called ‘Engines of Economic Growth’. It is imperative that they perform as motivational factors to our economic progress. This pattern of urban progress that is now visible in India will keep continuing for nearby future.
Urban areas will be crucial to the economic growth of the country and will require a massive overhaul to accommodate the influx in future. To cater to this growing urban population, in the future, cities need to provide a suitable environment for future investments, create new jobs and livelihoods, build reliable public infrastructure, provide social services with sufficient access to affordable housing and most necessarily support efficient utilisation of resources for a standard quality of life. This considerable growth also provides impetus for the creation of smart cities, which utilise information and communication technology (ICT) to improve largely the productivity, lifestyle and the prosperity of the dwellers. Moreover, green growth master plans can build environmentally sustainable cities. The vision for ‘Smart City’ has two major aspects: Technology transportation and energy efficiency. Digital technologies or information and communication technologies (ICT) are used in a smart city to promote quality and performance of urban services, to cut down costs and resource consumption and to remain engaged more effectively and actively with its citizens. ICT discovers the requirements of the area and directs to plan accordingly.
The consequences of climate change, such as sea level rises, melting of glaciers and more frequent changes of extreme weather events with heavy rainfalls and drought periods, pose a great danger to business and livelihoods all over the world. In the attempt to reduce the rising global temperature, the Government of India has set a number of emission targets, which have the potential to improve energy security simultaneously. Energy efficiency is seen conspicuously as a predominant aspect for shielding competitiveness of Indian industry in the longer term. Keeping it in mind, India has committed itself to reducing emissions by escalating the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption to rise in energy efficiency. Besides these, India has prepared a blueprint to shape the low-carbon economy essential for these goals, and thus clarifying a pathway for an India-wide transition to a sustainable energy system. This emphasis on sustainability and climate change mitigation can lead to greater emphasis on cheap energy and competitiveness.
The Energy Performance mentioned in Buildings Directive concentrates mainly on the energy performance of individual buildings with agreeable reasons to address sets of buildings and to determine a common balance of energy for them. It is necessary to analyse the demand and supply of energy for estimating the opportunity of considering sets of buildings one-by-one. Energy demand can be made up for those that are deprived of getting a low energy demand with an agreeable effort provided the disadvantageous conditions affect one or a number of buildings within the same neighbourhood (e.g., shading); while nearby or on-site systems can work as an advantageous substitute to individual systems per building for energy supply. This type of small central supply can produce benefits regarding capital cost savings, higher efficiency and better seasonal storage. Long-term thinking and decision-making plays predominant role for achieving all these.
Management of Energy in Smart City
Energy management by the source nation is essential in a smart city. The main and major objective of integrated energy management is to achieve and maintain sustainable energy realised at the ground level; side-by-side, measures to conserve energy must be executed. Excessive utilisation of any energy source such as coal or oil for generation of electricity causes plights of problems like acid rain and increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Hydroelectric power stations and atomic energy stations were championed for curtailing dependence on oil and coal for generating electricity. Huge dams can contribute considerably to economic growth in developing countries’ short of electricity like India, but there must be a compromise regarding the case of large-scale electricity generation. Reservoirs deluge wildlife habitats, forests and farmland and even eradicate communities of native people. In order to meet the growing demand, efficient utilisation of energy and its conservation are preponderant factors.
Energy is the key resource to industrial development. It is generated both from commercial sources such as petroleum, coal, hydroelectric plants and non-commercial sources like fuel-wood, cow-dung and agricultural wastes. The index of economic advancement attained by a country is the consumption of commercial energy per head. However, India consumes a very low amount of commercial energy per head— one-eighth of the world average.
Commercial energy supplies a little over half of the total energy used in the country, and the rest comes from non-commercial sources. Since the last two and half a decade, agriculture has been consuming commercial energy at a greater rate. However, now the twin factors, environmental conservation and energy generation, are emerging from exploitative interaction of man with natural resources.
Methodical management of energy is critical to a smart city because it largely depends on power. It is maintained by technologies like smart metering, cloud computing and wireless connected sensors. Smart meters allow two-way monitoring from both the utility providers and the end-user to monitor consumption, loads of peak hours etc.
These systems provide information essential to the citizens in order to help better manage their plan tariffs. Furthermore, smart cities also use ‘smart grids’, i.e. power grids integrated with controls, automation and latest technologies to boost efficient transmission and quicker restoration of power on outages or other incidences, cut down overall operation and management costs and combine renewable energy systems. Besides these, they offer financial incentives to the consumers for shifting the electrical demand during off-peak hours. Above all, smart grids give opportunities to save energy and at the same time reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Smart city provides seamless and integrated public transport and communication networks in multiple modes—rail, metro, bus and non-motorised transportation (walking and cycling). Preferably, ICT is integrated with the transport networks with a view to allowing real-time tracking and increasing citizen access to information on transportation. Directed parking and volume-based traffic control systems are the measures that help handling traffic challenges and improve flexibility.
Energy policy now has two ways. One leads to the fossil fuels or the hard way, which means to go on as we have been for many years i.e. giving importance to energy quantity by discovering more amounts of fossil fuels and building larger power plants.
The second way is the soft one which leads to the energy substitutes that lay importance on energy quality and are also renewable, flexible and more eco-friendly. The soft way depends mainly on renewable energy that includes sunlight, wind, biomass, tidal energy etc. and waste management to create energy.
This initiative will certainly help cities and regions to undertake ambitious and spearheading measures in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gas through sustainable utilisation and production of energy. This will need methodical approaches and organisational innovation, incorporating energy efficiency, low carbon technologies and the efficient management of supply and demand. The principal constituents of this initiative would comprise especially steps on buildings, local energy networks and transport.
The final goal of the ‘Smart Cities’ is the design of energy neutral cities with the least carbon dioxide emissions. In smart cities, people are creators in an urban context where sustainable environment plays a crucial role. Best utilisation of waste to energy helps maintaining a high quality of the use of technology through ICT and many other endeavours.
The pinpointed cities would be designed in partnership with Centre, State and urban local bodies in a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The Centre will pay the viability gap funding (VGF) for undertaking the initiative. The Government of India realises the importance of promoting industrial energy efficiency for handling competitiveness, reducing total energy demand and the emission of greenhouse gases.
The Govt. of India has built industrial corridors, like Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, Delhi-Chennai Industrial Corridor etc. in order to make transportation effective with the help of modern roadways that connect the rural areas with the urban ones easily with a view to meet the urban demands and reduce the gap of supply and cut down the consumption of fuel. The venture by the Govt. to build these economic corridors is certainly positive. Apart from the technological challenges, there should be change in the standard of society and lifestyle, and in parallel to this energy saving attitudes must be adopted. Therefore, development of smart cities and sustainable transport systems, where electricity will play as the sustainable carrier, are essential to bring these attitudes into reality, whereas development of smart grid at distribution level helps building smart cities.
Conclusion
Energy conservation is considerably a quick and economical way to solve the problem of power shortage and a way of saving the country’s finite sources of energy, and the conservation procedures need relatively smaller investments, are cost-effective and also have short evolution as well as payback periods. The smart cities will focus on the development of smart energy efficient buildings, greener environment, and cleaner atmosphere and minimising energy consumption, without any compromise with comfort. Modern technology symbolises the age of energy positive buildings ready at hand for both domestic and office use optimised by thermal storage technology. Therefore, smart cities will meet the energy requirements of India in future and help increasing the sustainable and efficient energy. Further advancements in energy security will help India to become a global icon.