In the future, most people will live in cities - yet there are many challenges associated with this scenario. The smart urban pioneers idea contest, launched by the automobile company smart, is looking to support visionaries who make city-life even better with intelligent solutions to today's urban challenges, accompanying the best ideas from concept to implementation. Renat Heuberger, CEO, South Pole Group, has been selected as one of the five expert jury members for the contest.
"South Pole Group is spearheading major projects in the field of climate adaptation and mitigation for cities - the Low Carbon City Lab and the CityActions Platform, both key initiatives under the EU innovation platform Climate-KIC. I could not be happier to share our expertise in the area of cities as part of this great idea contest," he says.
The Low Carbon City Lab (LoCal) is an ambitious project financed by Climate-KIC and led by South Pole Group: Its objective is to unlock the climate action potential of cities by reducing 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) annually and leveraging € 25 billion worth of climate finance for cities by 2050. The LoCal partners will provide cities with better tools for assessing greenhouse gas emissions, planning, investing and evaluating progress.
This South Pole Group city-expertise will trickle into the smart urban pioneers idea contest organised in three phases during which the expert jury of five as well as smart magazine readers will select the most outstanding of the submitted projects. The three staggered phases of smart urban pioneers ensure that all projects are thoroughly vetted and evaluated. During the application phase, urban visionaries are encouraged to submit their promising ideas, concepts, and projects. The expert jury of five will then pinpoint ten projects for the shortlist. In phase two, these projects will be then portrayed on smart magazine, where readers will vote for their three favorites. In the final phase smart will curate the top three submissions with crowdfunding campaigns on the international crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. In addition to the crowdfunding campaign, smart will support the winners with a total of €50,000. The minds behind the top project receive €25,000, those in second place €15,000, and the third-ranked ones €10,000 to realise their ideas.
