Case Studies ( G )

Miskolc is a city well-known for its heavy industry and, consequently, the quality of the air is low (smog is a serious issue in the city) and CO2 emissions are high. Having the second largest district heating system in Hungary, the municipality needs to improve its energy management and become more environmentally-friendly.

Ghent is a Belgian metropolitan city with a surface of 15,643 ha, 60,000 inhabitants in its metropolitan area and 258,119 inhabitants in Ghent itself. People from 161 different nationalities are spread over 25 neighbourhoods sharing their diverse cultural experiences and backgrounds. It is the largest student city in the region of Flanders, with about 75,000 students. Current unemployment rate is at about 9.2%.

GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) is the first International Financial Services Centre in India, located in the city of Gandhinagar, State of Gujarat, covering an area of 15 million square feet (construction is still ongoing, but some of the main buildings are already operational – more than 100 companies were working in the city by the end of 2017).

The City of Aarhus has the ambitious goal of becoming a carbon neutral society by 2030. As Denmark’s second largest city and one of the fastest growing economies of the country, Aarhus has challenged itself to comprehensively address the issue of climate change, relying on its citizens and corporate partners to turn its vision into reality.

In 2017, the City of Graz, Austria, began piloting an innovative clean public mobility system: the e-bus, an electric vehicle that uses capacitors instead of batteries to store energy. The e-buses are running in specific lines that are equipped with two 340 kW AC/DC fast charging stations (one at a terminal and one at an intermediate stop).

The GrowSmarter “lighthouse” programme was launched in January 2015 and it will be developed until December 2019. GrowSmarter received €25 million funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.