EU Grants IOTA Foundation $23 Million for Smart City Project +CityxChange

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by Rahul Nambiampurath

IOTA will receive $23.57 million from the EU after its +CityxChange project was selected to help launch seven future IOTA Smart Cities by 2020.

The European Union has approved the IOTA Foundation’s +CityxChange (positive city exchange) project as part of its ‘Smart Cities and Communities’ program. The announcement was made July 07, 2018. The EU will also provide IOTA with financial aid worth $23.5 million. The IOTA Foundation will be tasked with helping to develop seven European cities into smart cities over the coming years. The +CityxChange project was selected as the best project by experts among eleven competing proposals. 

Wilfried Pimenta, Head of Business Development at the IOTA Foundation made the announcement that their +CityxChange project was selected by the EU. 

Pimenta also said,

The independent experts evaluating the proposal commend +CityxChange for demonstrating and substantiating actions that will contribute to the wide scale roll out of Positive Energy Districts across Europe, with a convincing approach to make local governments an active and integral part of the energy solution, engaging citizens in the city transformation, and involving the entire district energy value chain, extending to high level policy makers and cities, universities, large enterprises, distributed network operators, SMEs, and not for profit organisations. 

Seven Cities Selected

The cities of Trondheim, Limerick, Alba Iulia, Pisek, Sestao, Smolyan, and Voru will be developed as smart cities over the next five years. While IOTA will lead the efforts, an amalgam of corporations, SMEs, non-profit organizations, and universities will also provide non-financial assistance to the smart city project. Some of the project members are also slated to contribute 10 million Euros of in-kind funding to create the prototypes in Trondheim and Limerick. Work on the project is scheduled to begin on January 01, 2019.

The IOTA Foundation will develop these seven cities into smart cities that, among other things, will achieve higher energy efficiency with the help of IOTA's advanced technologies.

The independent experts evaluating the proposal commend +CityxChange for demonstrating and substantiating actions that will contribute to the wide scale roll out of Positive Energy Districts across Europe, with a convincing approach to make local governments an active and integral part of the energy solution, engaging citizens in the city transformation, and involving the entire district energy value chain, extending to high level policy makers and cities, universities, large enterprises, distributed network operators, SMEs, and not for profit organisations / Wilfried Pimenta.