Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: The City, the BABA podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlin Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by Babel Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the Babel platform at Babel SmartCities EU.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So welcome back everyone to another episode of Smart in the City. I am sitting in the wonderful city of Sonderborg in the south of Denmark at the Rethink City Summit and I'm interviewing and getting insights from some of the speakers, some of the participants, and of course, first off, to set the stage, I have to give a huge thanks to the organizers of the Rethink City Summit for having me here today and for the great collaboration.
It's a wonderful little event with some amazing people and I think a lot of people are learning a lot from each other. So that's a success in itself.
Now I want to dive into some of the content and introduce you to who I have here today.
His name is Mark Marcus Paulsen. He's the energy strategist of the city of Lund in Sweden. Welcome, Marcus.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, really nice to have you. I've actually been to Lund like many years ago and I found it to be quite a lovely city. So I'm really happy to learn more about what you're doing in energy also.
So we like to get a little warmed up to start us off.
So I have a bit of a teaser question for you today.
My question is, if you had three magic wishes, that magic wand, how would you use them to sustainably advance Lune's energy transition?
Maybe it's not so much of a warm up, huh?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: You mean magic? Really? Magic magic.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Well, tomorrow it's totally a different.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Well then, then, then I will move Lund to tropical destination.
You said magic. Yeah. Okay.
Because then we didn't. Wouldn't need any energy for heating and we would have sun all around and then we will have all the energy that we need. There you go. That's it. I don't need it. I don't need.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: You don't need the other ones. Okay. That's your only wish is the heating is your major downfall then.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: And sun.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: And to have sun. Okay, perfect.
Yes. True magic. I like. I like the way you Think I want to learn a little bit more about you as a person. What's your background? What led you into your role today?
[00:03:05] Speaker C: I grew up outside Lund in. In a small village but.
And I found myself interested into. Into environmental issues already at school.
So at secondary school I chose science, scientific paths, so to say. And then at that time, now we're talking about the Ninet went to Whitney University.
I took biology because there were no dedicated studies for just environment.
That has changed a lot since then. But that was my path.
And at university I found many things interesting as you tend to do. So I stayed there for a few more years doing a PhD study and finished off as a PhD and in still in biology.
But at that time the environmental issue was concerning the ozone layer and the UV radiation hitting the earth. So my studies was on how plant can cope higher levels of UV radiation.
So that was interesting. But then I felt that university is not the whole life. I need to do something else. And I wanted to get back to environmental issues.
So after a while I ended up at a small consultancy firm helping companies with their environmental work and helping different kinds of companies in many industries. That was very, very.
I learned a lot from the all these companies that I visited and helping them with their environmental. Environmental things.
And then I got this position at the city of Lund as biogas coach, the first one in the country, helping advancing the biogas sector in the municipality and also four other neighboring municipalities.
And after that I got my current position as energy strategist.
So that is what I'm doing now.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Quite a journey.
I love listening to people's journeys. So really interesting.
Tell us a little bit more about Lund and about where you're at with the energy transition within the city.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Well, we have been working a long time with environment and energy and climate issues for a long time.
And we had this Agenda 21 work already in the 90s, long before I started that then turned into our climate plan that we call Lunda Eco and it's now in its third generation.
And there it's stated that we should become climate neutral.
And to do that we also need to work with many different sectors, for instance for energy.
And the situation is also that Lund is the majority owner of the local energy company Kathlingen together with some other municipalities.
And they are also obliged to follow our climate goals.
So we work together and thereby making the transition of the decarbonization.
And one important aspect is of course that we have district heating that supplies around 90% of the heat demand of the city.
So when the district heating company Change Fuel, it has a massive impact.
And so we set up a goal about 2010 that district heating should be fossil free in 2020 and they achieved that by 2018.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: So two year ahead of plan.
So that has been a tremendous effect on our emissions.
So we actually decreased the greenhouse gas emission by 50% from 1992 to 2020 and largely to this shift in the energy sector.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Really interesting. So you also have CO Action Lund, right?
Can you talk more about that?
It's a large scale system demonstrator from my understanding.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And also any difficulties, I guess that you're having with it would be quite interesting as well.
[00:08:20] Speaker C: The Co Action Lund is an initiative from the city originally.
We have a climate advisory board that is researched from the university that go through the actions of the city of what we do and don't do. And they give us some advice on how to advance and how to make sure that we reach the targets.
And it's only on the city level.
So the first one, at least in Sweden, at the city level we have one in the national level.
And they gave the advice.
You have done so much in your own operations that there's not much to do. It's 99.4% fossil free.
So. So now you need to reach out to other sectors of society. How can we cooperate?
So that was their advice a few years ago.
And then the police, politicians came back with a climate package with some money and said, go out, join with companies and so on. So Coaxialund is a response to this, to this request from the politicians.
And then it's our way to interpret this, of course, that we trying to cooperate with businesses, with academia, but also civil sectors on how to become climate neutral and to reach beyond the city's own mandate.
So what can we do together?
When we work together, then we can't blame each other because it's everybody's fault that we are failing and things that shouldn't fall behind between the chairs because we did this together. So. So we should take responsibility of everything that we do.
So that. That is like the basic, basic principle of, of the coaction, the idea behind it.
And then we went out knocking doors to many different actors, to companies.
And there was a long time of dialogue with all of them, but eventually most of them got on board.
And then in the center we targeted property owners and employees because that is where the transportation takes place to and from both commuting of personnel, but also of freight, but also energy is Used but can also be produced by these different actors.
And around them we have what we call infrastructure owner organizations that own infra spirit cables, wirings and things like that.
But also like public transport, we call them infrastructure owner because they can help the core, core, core partners to do their job.
And then on the outer layer we have what we call solutions providers.
And they come with different ideas and solutions, knowledge and products that we can use to improve our city. So by that we build a whole ecosystem of, of actors to make us climate neutral.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: You definitely need a whole ecosystem to actually achieve, achieve the goals set out. So I think this is a really interesting approach with, for companies.
You mentioned the solution providers. Right. I just want to speak to that quickly.
For companies who are looking to be a solution provider for cities, work in these different areas, what do you wish that they knew to better understand municipal decision making, to better understand where you're coming from as a city and to collaborate better with you.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: Well, they need to understand the processes of the city, that it can sometimes take time and that we need to anchor all our decisions.
But when we then have decided, then we have a strong possibility to realize them, to make them into the real world.
So they need to understand that there is a big potential, but they have to be patient.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Patience, this is always the challenge that I see with these collaborations is of course private sector is ready to move now and public sector needs a bit longer.
So definitely get that patience is key. At the same time we also have to move with a sense of urgency because the topics that we work on are also urgent.
It's hard to reconcile both.
I don't know.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: Yes, yes. Yeah, of course we need to move, but we, we have done quite a lot already. Yeah, so we're not starting from zero exactly. But we, we always looking at improvements. Of course.
And how can we take the next step?
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, makes sense.
So today you spoke about the internetification of the energy system, is that correct?
[00:14:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Okay, I want to dig into that topic.
What did you speak about? Is this different than like smart grid concepts? What is the internetification that you spoke about and how is it applied?
[00:14:46] Speaker C: We now call it EnergyNet. This system and that it is. We didn't have that name when we started, but we came up with it along the way and it's a concept and actually a new architecture for how to distribute energy.
So it's totally different from the old grid because it's based on local level and then builds up. So it's a bottom up structure giving power to the edge because that's where the things happens, that's where the demand is.
But nowadays also a lot of the productions can be at the edge of the grid, but it also gives power to the community to solve their own issues in many ways.
So it's an architecture that has been inspired by how Internet works.
So it's a digitally controlled system that it's distributed so you can connect any building with any building.
It's not hierarchical, doesn't have a central point. It's self healing and modular.
So there are many, many benefits with this, what I would call 21st century architecture. Compared to the old grid that was invented in the 19th century.
It was brilliant at its time, but it didn't have the problems we have today and it didn't have the possibilities we have today with digitalization.
So I think it's a better architecture for the future and also for today. Actually.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: You mentioned the benefits of it and just to play devil's advocate, it's a decentralized system with that also has potential cons. I can imagine what do you see as kind of the negative sides of things or maybe risks that you have to mitigate with such a, such a system?
[00:17:02] Speaker C: There of course, one risk that people usually brings up is the cybersecurity risk, since everything is turned digital and it's controlled by software. Actually every node is controlled by software. Then it's supposed to be sensitive to cyber attacks.
That is of course true.
There is a sensitivity issue concerning that.
But just as we moved from typewriter to computer, we were also facing cyber attacks in our computer. But we still use computer because they offer so much more to us than the previous system.
And the same thing here applies that we will get more benefits out of it, although we have new difficulties and new problems that we have to deal with.
But I don't think anyone wanted to go back to the typewriter.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Simpler days though, right? Sometimes once in a while I want to go back to typewriter times and just get rid of my phone and all that. That's why we escape into nature sometimes. But yes, in general I think we don't want to go back in time.
[00:18:21] Speaker C: You mean vacation?
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Vacation? Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you want vacation.
What do you think is still a remaining main challenge for the city of Lund? And what tools or mechanisms do you think you might need to really accelerate the change in your city? So some say, you know, I need more funding. Some might say, you know, innovation within procurement. What do you think? What do you think? Lund is really lacking at the moment. And the main challenge remaining.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: We have picked all the easy fruits, I would say so we decreased the emission more than 50%.
But now we have the difficult part remaining and we need actually to get that notion into every part of the administration and to understand that to reach zero we must make more effort.
We have reached this far with this effort. To get the last part, we need even more effort.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: And that's across departments as you view as like a big challenge just internally.
[00:19:46] Speaker C: It has to be internalized in every department. Yes.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds like a big endeavor. What do you think is like the tool that will help you do that?
[00:20:00] Speaker C: We, as part of the Mission Cities, we are exploring this pathway with a transition team and things like that.
And that's a good way.
We are on it, but we need to come.
We actually don't need to convince the politicians, they're already there.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: But we need to convince all the silos that they need.
It's not enough to, to, to, to scratch on the surface. Then we need a deep change.
Yeah.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Like a full internal marketing campaign almost. Right. Or internal communication campaign and education is probably a big role in that.
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different avenues and I think probably lots of them have to be utilized. Right. To really integrate into all the silos.
Now I like to give the open floor to you because we touched on a lot of interesting topics, but you might have something else that we missed or that maybe we just touched on lightly that you think is really important for our listeners to know about. Do you have a topic that you really want them to know?
[00:21:19] Speaker C: Well, I would like to continue with the Energy Net story.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Because I think it is a revolution.
Just as Internet revolutionized the telecommunication. I think we can do a lot of things here in energy distribution as well because when it becomes digitalized, the, the not only is it possible to optimize in a totally new way so we can save a lot of energy, but it also opens up for many third party services that we don't even can dream of today.
That ingenuity in different people can become services that we can use in the future. I mean 20 years ago, who would even imagine of an app store?
I think we see something similar in.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: The energy sector that's quite inspiring. Do you see have others implemented energy nets as well?
You're the first. First in the world and only still.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: There are some similar thoughts, different places, some in us, some in China.
So actually now that Pandora's box is opened and now it's competition, but that's good.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Also to spread the word about it, to let others know about this system and see if it might work for them.
Wonderful. I'm glad that we got the chance to tell a little bit of that story also here today.
Now we get to move to our fun segment. The segment that I have for you today is called Trial and Error.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Trial and error.
What went wrong, what mistakes were made along the way and more importantly, what lessons were learned.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: I don't know if you have a story that comes to mind where you learned a big key lesson that you'd like to share with everyone.
[00:23:35] Speaker C: Well, a few years ago I tried to develop a project how to get more biogas from. From wastewater treatment.
Biogas is the largest, or was the largest source of.
Sorry, wastewater treatment was the largest source of biogas production in Sweden at that time. I don't think it is anymore.
And we tried to get actors together, but it turned out that they had different wheels and it was difficult to. To collect different actors in one project.
So that was actually.
That made me do a.
Take a different turn that eventually ended up in. In the structure of Coaxial and today.
So how to work with partners.
So that.
So. So it was kind of a failure.
And how to address them, how to work with them, how to speak with them, everything like that, that I personally, I learned a lot from it and changed some things.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Like what?
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Well, I got a better structure for how to interact.
So we had a.
What we call a better description of the activity that all departments should participate in.
And also not not only talk, but also action to demand both of them.
So you cannot only say that the partners in a network, we also demand action.
So putting some demands also on the actors that want to participate, that makes us go further.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah, really good lessons. I think a good model for partnership and setting clear roles and actions moving forward.
Wonderful.
Now we come to our final question. And it's the question that I ask every single guest that comes on. As you can imagine, I get a lot of different answers. It's the question of to you, what is a smart city?
[00:26:34] Speaker C: A smart city is something you never noticed when things just work.
So you as a citizen, you have a great everyday life, but in the background there's a lot of systems, technology and things working.
But you can have a good everyday life.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Just everything running smoothly in the background.
[00:27:01] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: I love it. All right. With that I just have to thank you, Marcus, for coming on. I really, really enjoyed our conversation today. I enjoy learning more about energy from you, about Lund.
So thank you very much for coming on.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: And of course I have to thank all of our listeners. And of course, again, the organizers of Rethinkcities Summit.
And to our listeners, don't forget, you can always create a free account on babel-smartcities eu. You can find out more about smart city projects, solutions, implementations and more. Thank you very much.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
