NEWS in brief
life in cities and
the importance
of urban design
being people
centric.
“We must find
ways to merge
managing the
risk of water and
embracing it as an asset, making sure that what we are left
with are solutions that increase people’s quality of life in
cities,” said Søholt. “People are attracted to water. We have
positive associations with the sound and blue colour of
water, all linked to our needs as humans. So naturally we
see waterfront destinations come up all over the world and
people congregating at these placed to enjoy the sound and
activities surrounding water.”
Gehl are focused on building cities for people and making
sure all their work benefits those that live, work and move
around cities today. Integrated design solutions have been
identified as one of the biggest challenges facing city
authorities in getting people across different silos to work
together.
One of Søholt’s key points was that there is a common
denominator with all of the risks we are facing; people and
their behavioural change, which need to be addressed in all
the solutions that are being formulated.
When the city of Gothenburg were formulating its strategy
a team was gathered across all the various departments to
sit together in the same space in the harbour to come up
with new solutions.
“It is unfortunately very seldom that I see this kind of
totally integrated solution making and creative design
leadership in cities around the world,” explained Søholt.
“So we have to overcome this way of silo planning and
move away from reactive governance where we think of
planning as a linear process and move towards a much
more proactive facilitative leadership model where the
cities are actually engaging all the stakeholders to come
up with not just good projects but with shared value.
Something that we can see we are all benefitting from.”
The city of Copenhagen was highlighted as a leading
example after the designing of a climate neighbourhood
in the northern part of the city, where they have engaged
local citizens through a local office where people can be
involved in the design of plazas and streets.
Authorities have also recently created a green city strategy
for the whole of Copenhagen. One of the elements in this
strategy is planting 1,000 new trees in the city, where the
citizens were asked to vote for the streets in most need of
greening and climate adaptation design.
Global Highlights
UK using wave energy to generate electricity
Green Marine transport the Penguin to European Marine
Energy Centre wave test site
A wave energy converter, produced by technology
company Wello, has successfully generated electricity into
the national grid
off the west
coast of Orkney,
Scotland.
Tidal and
wave energy
installation
company, Green
Marine, installed
the Penguin
wave energy converter at the beginning of March at the
European Marine Energy Centre’s grid-connected wave
test site.
This is the first of three wave energy converters due to be
installed at European Marine Energy Centre over the next
three years as part of the Clean Energy from Ocean Waves
project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme.
“This is a tremendous milestone for Wello and all Clean
Energy from Ocean Waves partners, but also for the wave
energy sector as a whole,” said Neil Kermode, Managing
Director of the European Marine Energy Centre. “Not
only has Wello’s Penguin survived heavy swell and stormy
conditions since being deployed, it is now generating
power into the local grid. Congratulations to everyone who
has worked towards this moment, and we look forward to
the future learning that will come from this project.”
Led by energy company Fortum, the generation of
power is a major milestone within the Clean Energy from
Ocean Waves project, which aims to ready the Penguin
technology for commercialization by developing the first
grid-connected wave energy array in the UK, focusing
on lowering the levelised cost of energy and developing
an efficient supply chain to support larger wave power
projects in the future.
“This is a very exciting period in the project for us, and
the Wello office in Orkney has been buzzing with people
eager to watch the screens showing the live generation
feeds,” said Mikko Muoniovaara, Senior Project Manager
at Fortum. “This has proven the viability of the Penguin
concept, as not only can the technology survive in the
harsh waves around Orkney, but it can generate power
from them. For Fortum, this is very promising progress.”
The Clean Energy from Ocean Waves consortium spans
the full value chain including research organisations, wave
converter technology developers, marine service providers
and a large multi-national utility company. In addition to
Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • July - August 2017
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