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PORTO, Portugal — [Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on BusinessGreen, and is reprinted with permission.]
The first thing to say about European startup Living PlanIT is that it is ambitious.
Not only is it planning to build the world's greenest city from scratch at a site in northern Portugal, it wants to establish its PlanIT Valley development as both a genuine European alternative to Silicon Valley and a working template for a new generation of low carbon cities -- ones that combine real environmental sustainability with a quality of life almost unrecognizable from the crowded, smog-drenched reality.
The company's plans for a brand new city jam-packed with bleeding-edge green technologies and capable of housing 225,000 people, while producing "negligible" greenhouse gas emissions, leads to the raising of skeptical eyebrows at the best of times.
But at a time when it is all the harder for the company to raise the $10bn it estimates will be required, due to the global financial crisis, you could be forgiven for thinking that Living PlanIT's plans sound more like an admirable thought experiment than a viable construction project.
It is an impression not helped by the company's penchant for the kind of marketing blather that, in order to understand it, requires a degree in PR. For example, the company's claim that its "design and manufacturing platforms enable the convergence of computing, network and sensing technologies with the fabric of buildings and places, demonstrated at urban scale in the development and operations of PlanIT Valley," does not really explain what it does.
But listening to chief executive Steve Lewis outline his plans for the company and it becomes possible to not just suspend your disbelief, but also start to think that the company might just deliver on its absurdly ambitious promise.
Lewis's rationale for the company is both convincing and admirably simple. He argues the construction industry remains the last great bastion of the economy to resist the IT revolution that has enhanced efficiencies across every other industry -- and that resistance cannot last forever.
Living PlanIT plans to integrate IT into the fabric of the city, installing hundreds of thousands of sensors that allow an urban operating system to deliver intelligent buildings that are constantly optimized to enhance comfort, productivity and environmental sustainability. Meanwhile, the latest renewable energy technologies and green building techniques will allow the city to operate with a virtually non-existent carbon footprint.
the environmental cost of
the environmental cost of putting in all this technology may well considerably outweigh the environmental benefits throughout the whole lifecycle of the city project. nice pr stunt like.
Understand how you may draw
Understand how you may draw this conclusion and it would be deceiving (as per some other developments in the world in which the developer forgets to measure the true impact of construction) to say that resources are not consumed in the delivery of PlanIT Valley. However, there are stark differences in what we are attempting to achieve versus any other project in the world today. A couple of examples:
- We are using techniques used by other industries for a generation now that radically reduce consumption of energy, resources and production of waste.
- PlanIT Valley produces all of its own energy, manages its own water and reconsumes all of its waste. PlanIT Valley has been designed to effectively be "off grid" - and yes, that means all of them.
- PlanIT Valley will consume waste from the surrounding region and produce energy, renewable fuels and pharmaceutical products from this waste source.
- The technology developed, perfected and deployed in PlanIT Valley will be provided to world industries for implementation elsewhere which will signicantly reduce existing city impacts and reduce those of the new cities the world has to build to accomodate urban shift populations.
- PlanIT Valley's model reduces the overal impact of mankind on our planet's resources and environment and is the first important step in providing a common approach to addressing the critical challenges generations of industrialization and consumerism has created for us all.
- We recognize our role and obligation in working towards a better world for us all and the flora and fauna we share it with.