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CoRDEES Smart-Grid Energy Management Platform

Solution Overview

The City of Paris has developed a data-driven approach to optimize energy management in urban districts through the CoRDEES (CoResponsibility in District Energy Efficiency & Sustainability) project.[1] This initiative represents a comprehensive smart-grid technology implementation designed to address the significant gap between theoretical and actual energy performance in sustainable building developments.[1] The system operates within Paris's broader climate data strategy, which includes multiple projects aimed at developing new ways to use data in response to climate change-related challenges.[6]

Technical Components

The CoRDEES project deployed a Community Energy Management Platform, an interoperable and multi-user system that monitors, consolidates, and analyzes energy data in real time across all buildings (electricity and heat) and public facilities including electric vehicle stations, street lighting, and automated waste collection.[3] This platform consolidates all energy data from 12 real estate programs, tracking consumption, peak consumption, production, level of autonomy, and storage capacity.[5] The facilitator uses this data analysis platform with systemic, real-time analysis to improve the coordination of production and demand.[6] At the end of February 2018, a key implementation step began with the deployment of sensors (instrumentation) in buildings.[8] By April 2019, the project delivered a BtoC community portal V1, and by June 2019 developed energy services for operators and end-users.[4] The final version of the Community Energy Management Platform was completed by October 2019.[4]

Implementation Details

The CoRDEES project was implemented in the Clichy Batignolles eco-district, a 54-hectare area under construction in Paris.[4][3] The European Union's Urban Innovative Actions Initiative awarded the project €4.3 million, with a total ERDF budget of EUR 4,364,796.48 granted.[1][4] The partnership included Ville de Paris, Une autre ville (UAV) private company, PARIS BATIGNOLLES AMENAGEMENT (PBA) public/private company, ARMINES research center, and EMBIX private company.[4][5] The subsidy contract was signed by the Mayor of Paris in April 2017, followed by a kick-off event and press conference in May 2017.[4] On May 31, 2017, a hundred people including real estate operators, developers, architects, energy experts, and representatives of the state and city of Paris gathered to publicly launch the project on the 7th floor of lot 7 of the development zone of Clichy Batignolles.[8] The Parisian and European stakes of the project were presented by Jean Louis Missika (Deputy Mayor of Paris), Jean François Danon (Director of Paris Batignolles Aménagement), and Raffaele Barbato (representative of the UIA program).[8] On March 24, 2017, the Paris municipality and its stakeholders entered the first step of the program, with 50 professionals from 20 companies gathering.[8] In June 2017, the project held its first workshop with inhabitants and local associations to involve them in the project and imagine future services.[4]

Benefits and Impacts

The CoRDEES project aimed to reach the energy efficiency objective of 50 kWh/m² and less than 90% of CO2 emissions through its integrated approach.[3][4] This community-based model aims to enlist end users to help monitor and manage energy at Clichy-Batignolles to ensure that buildings achieve the carbon dioxide reductions they were designed to.[1] The approach addresses a critical challenge, as data from the occupied buildings at Clichy-Batignolles suggests significant discrepancy between the theoretical and the actual energy performance, despite the project coming very close to net-zero carbon emissions on paper.[1] Within Paris's broader data initiatives, the DataCity Paris program helped save up to 10 percent on the city's annual street lighting electricity bill and cut greenhouse gas emissions by analyzing data on street usage to identify off-peak times where the lights can be dimmed.[2] In the second round of DataCity challenges, the City of Paris specified it wanted solutions to help achieve its target outlined in the Paris Climate Plan to reduce energy consumption in its buildings by 10 percent by 2020 through behavioural action.[7]

Climate Adaptation Relevance

The CoRDEES project addresses climate adaptation challenges by creating a new energy ecosystem designed to manage the expected 30% increase in overall energy consumption by 2030 in Grand Paris Metropole.[3] This approach directly responds to the need for real-time energy management systems that can bring energy use in line with Paris's ambitious climate targets while accounting for the performance gaps that emerge in occupied sustainable buildings.[1]

Business Analysis

The project introduced innovative governance structures including the Urban Energy New Deal, which collectively defines energy commitments and contractual, financial, and regulatory conditions for successful implementation.[3] By October 2019, standard clauses for new economic conditions and contracting schemes were in place, along with the Urban Energy New Deal and Urban Sustainability Trustee Facilitator.[4] The project introduced a new actor called the Urban Sustainability Trustee Facilitator to provide technical recommendations, ensure stakeholder cooperation, empower end users, and coordinate the creation and implementation of services.[4] This platform, led by a neighborhood energy facilitator, tests a new collaborative governance that involves the co-responsibility of actors involved in energy performance.[5] The project must define a new business model that will ensure the energy facilitator becomes a permanent post.[6] The CoRDEES approach operates within Paris's broader innovation framework, where DataCity enables the city to experiment in small sections without having to make a large purchase through a co-production model where the city is not the only potential buyer and never the main leader of the project but a co-leader.[7] DataCity is managed by a special team within NUMA and operates as a meeting point of city government, corporates, start-ups, and technical partners working together throughout a nine-month programme to define urban challenges and develop solutions using data.[7] The City of Paris became one of the first cities to introduce an open data policy in 2010, making all structured data accessible by open license to promote their reuse and generate new applications.[7] C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of 91 of the world's cities committed to tackling climate change, partnered with tech firm NUMA to launch DataCity C40 in cities around the world, with the initiative based on data city programmes in Paris and Casablanca.[2] Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris and Chair of C40, stated that DataCity was conceived in Paris and every year the project allows the city to move faster on key issues for Paris and other cities around the world.[2]

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