SIEMENS

City report: London

Making London livable for everyone

Meeting point: City Hall, London, July 13, 2011, 12:30 p.m.

On a walk through central London, city representative Martin Powell and our City Account Manager Kevin Worster take stock of the challenges facing the huge city and the opportunities for improving the lives of its inhabitants through sustainable infrastructure solutions.

Siemens has been active in London for almost two hundred years, helping the city stay abreast of rapid growth and address the questions of the
future – with answers that Siemens is already providing today.

__Kevin Worster (left)

Kevin Worster has been Siemens’ City Account Manager in London since October 2009. His job is to drive innovation and thought leadership and leverage our entire portfolio to help master the city’s key challenges. In his thirteen years at Siemens, Worster has held a number of management positions.

__Martin Powell (right)

Martin Powell is responsible for climate change projects at the ­London Development Agency. The agency, which reports directly to the mayor, aims to ensure that the city’s economic growth is ­sustainable. Powell was formerly head of project management at Network Rail, the owner and operator of most of the rail infrastructure in the UK.

01__Kevin Worster

Martin, what is your idea of a sustainable city?

02__Martin Powell

A sustainable city is one that combines all of its various strategies together on water, energy, waste and transport, so that you have a single, holistic approach to tackle your urban challenges. I might add that in striving to achieve this, it is extremely helpful to have a single point of ­contact at our industry partners, such as Siemens has established with the City Account Management.

03__Kevin Worster

I’m glad to hear that. It always takes an effort to create such a role in a large and diversified organization. At Siemens, we believe that we need to become involved very early in any decision-making process for urban infrastructure, and the master-planning phase. This is where urban planners and architects today make important decisions determining the way ahead.

04__Martin Powell

That is certainly true. It’s where we need to balance political ideas with technological options and budget constraints. In this kind of discussion, solutions expertise and innovation as provided by a large-scale industrial partner are key, but it is equally important that our partner can make quick and informed decisions of its own.

05__Kevin Worster

Given that sustainability is also about changing people’s lifestyles, is there anything a company like Siemens can do to help make that happen?

06__Martin Powell

I think it’s about hearts and minds, and certainly Siemens is doing that in terms of the Crystal, the urban sustainability center here in London, to get a clear message out about what we all can do to improve sustainability and to improve lives within the city. Building the Siemens center and getting it up and running has been pretty impressive.

07__Kevin Worster

Absolutely. I think the fact that it took just six months from idea to inception for the center, six months, was a bit of a benchmark in London. It was a very fast-track program.

08__Martin Powell

There were a lot of parties that we had to convince and get on board. We worked quite closely together to do that. That was really good and underlines the reliable relationship between the city and Siemens. Let me add: I think the work we’ve done together on electric vehicles also could bear some interesting fruit.

09__Kevin Worster

I guess now what we need to do is maintain momentum. One challenge is air quality in London, certainly looking at emissions from buses. Some of the city’s buses now have Siemens technology, but the main challenge is that there’s a time limit on the things we really want to bring out for 2012. We’re working in close partnership with the Greater London Authority and the London Development Agency in terms of policy to make sure that things can happen.

10__Martin Powell

Beyond transport, the bigger challenge is to get London onto the path to a low-carbon economy. By 2025, we want to cut our CO2 emissions by 60% compared to 1990. That involves changing people’s minds and lifestyles, which isn’t always easy, but Siemens has been a great partner in giving people a perspective on what’s feasible and desirable while not losing the present quality of life.

11__Kevin Worster

We’re a partner of Low Carbon London, an initiative to reduce CO2. UK Power Networks is also a close partner. ­Additionally, we’re working closely with the London Develop­ment Agency in realizing the smart grid in the Green Enterprise District of London, Europe’s largest urban regeneration project.

12__Martin Powell

This came about through a conversation with UK Power ­Networks and Siemens and with other partners. We realized we had an opportunity to get a lot of money invested in ­London to understand how our grid works, how it will work in the future, how smart technology will integrate with our network, where it’s failed in lots of other cities. We’re very hopeful that this investment in London is going to succeed.

13__Kevin Worster

Our urban sustainability center may help in that. Even before it opened its doors, it has created lots of excitement within Siemens, lots of colleagues are fulfilling the same roles in other cities and are really looking forward to bringing their customers to London.

14__Martin Powell

A few people approached me about it in São Paulo, at the C40 climate summit chaired by Michael Bloomberg, who is mayor of New York. And they wanted to understand what it was going to do, how we thought it would benefit London, and we can use the lessons that come out of this experience and replicate them elsewhere.

15__Kevin Worster

The key attainments to be had from working with London would be to understand the city’s targets and drivers. You really need to put yourself in a city’s shoes to understand where it’s going in terms of air quality, buildings, transportation infrastructure, and then link in our innovative solutions, so that you have that kind of sustainable intelligent solution.

16__Martin Powell

For us, it’s understanding what it takes for businesses to invest in London, what conditions we need to put in place to make that happen. Ensuring our policies align with the business conditions that are of importance to a company like Siemens, to guarantee that we make businesses aware in London of what we’re trying to do, and how maybe to merge our awareness campaigns to promote London’s ­reputation as a business and investment location. For the future, I hope that Siemens continues to invest in the technology they have today and implement that into London right now. I think the London government needs to make some big infrastructure decisions today in order to allow even more investment into these areas fifteen years from now, particularly our energy supply which is often a longer-term, more difficult investment proposition to make.

17__Kevin Worster

We’re just taking the first steps. We have realized a lot of ­projects in London. Going forward, I think there is a huge amount more of what we can do, especially around trans­portation infrastructure and energy generation.