We are now up to cruising speed as we head into our second year and the consortium is intensively collaborating to fine-tune and plan the interventions at the demonstration sites.
Our 2nd progress meeting in June was far from being an isolated event. It was designed to fit into the fully packed Genoa Smart Week, hosted by Genoa Municipality. This Smart Week included a series of high-level policy events, conferences, and fora during which a number of other European projects in fields related to R2CITIES held their consortium meetings and general assemblies. The Smart Week thus represented a unique opportunity for leveraging outreach and knowledge sharing among the energy efficiency community at all levels. We will be spotlighting Genoa in this issue and introducing both Genoa Municipality and the University of Genoa.
At this point on the project’s timeline, one of the vital steps of bringing the demonstrations to fruition is the public procurement rounds. At each of the demonstration sites, Genoa (Italy), Kartal (Turkey), and Valladolid (Spain), the innovative retrofit work to be undertaken has to go through a procurement process. This is not straightforward since there is a fine middle road to go down between complying with local legislation and the necessary alignment of work among the three demonstration sites.
Happy reading and happy holidays!
Rubén Garcia Pajares
R2CITIES Coordinator
Fundación CARTIF