Smart Cities Initiative

Abstract

This study is aiming to give an insight into the Smart City initiative that General Electric (GE) Energy Services is currently elaborating. The Smart City Initiative is a response to the challenges cities are facing in the current changing environment. Its ambition is to help cities become more sustainable through the expertise that GE can provide. Sustainability is achieved through solutions enabling the city to reduce its demand on non-renewable natural resources while giving an incentive on renewable energy sources to power up its infrastructures without sacrificing their concurrent position. The study has been structured around two parts: On the one hand, the presentation of the global World trends until the horizon of 2030 followed by the GE Energy Services solution proposal. Its intent is to give an overview of the shape of the human civilization and its interaction with the environment on the forthcoming years. The challenges identified with the global trends are tackled from the GE Energy Services point of view through the Smart City initiative. On the other hand, the presentation of two business models having the purpose of quantifying the benefits derived from the Smart City Initiative: The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculation model, comparing the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) based vehicle with the Electrical Vehicle (EV) and the Outdoor Urban Lighting Model, underlying de financial benefits of switching from a conventional outdoor lighting system based on High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamp technology to a system based on Light-Emitting Diode (LED) technology.