SIEMENS

Guangzhou is a place where people like to work but prefer not to live” — that’s what the Chinese say when asked about their most important industrial center. The capital of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where China’s economic miracle was launched 30 years ago, is known for its high wages and poor quality of life. Guangzhou’s population of 7.9 million faces traffic jams, frequent smog, and repeated power shortages in the summer. It’s no surprise that Guangzhou is not considered one of China’s shining cities.

But old proverbs tend to stick even after reality has long since changed. When Guangzhou welcomed some 9,700 athletes to the Asian Games in November 2010, its guests, as well as millions of television viewers, were surprised to see a city where people evidently enjoy spending time after finishing their day’s work. A new district has been created in the city center over the past few years — an area that boasts sparkling skyscrapers, parks, a riverside promenade, and numerous cultural facilities. In addition, a public rail system offers hundreds of thousands of residents an alternative to buses and cars. The trademark of the new Guangzhou is the 432-meter West Tower, whose elegant steel facade stands out as a shining focal point at night.

Guangzhou’s government didn’t pull any rabbits out of a hat here. Instead, it focused its planning activities on the needs of its citizens, utilizing state-of-the-art technology to make the city more environmentally friendly and efficient, and more pleasant to live in. Many of the solutions that were employed originated with Siemens (see Pictures of the Future, Spring 2010, China’s Cities Come of Age). For example, the company provided the technology for the high-voltage direct current transmission system that supplies Guangzhou very efficiently with electricity from hydroelectric plants in Yunnan province, located 1,400 kilometers away. This not only stabilizes the power grid, but also protects the environmental by supplying Guangzhou with energy from renewable sources. Siemens also supplied the signaling systems for several of the city’s subway lines and the commuter railroad between Guangzhou and neighboring Foshan. The shimmering West Tower is “engineered by Siemens” as well. The 10,000 LEDs that illuminate the building were produced by Osram.

What has happened in Guangzhou is also occurring in many other large Asian cities. Indeed, the continent is undergoing the biggest efficiency transformation in the world at the moment — and its cities are the protagonists. Many of the region’s megacities are now pioneers of modern urban development, as is evidenced by the Asian Green City Index. This index, along with those for Europe and Latin America, was produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of Siemens. It delivers objective data that helps cities improve their environmental sustainability by providing a foundation for sharing knowledge.

200 Cities with Over One Million People. The challenges being faced by Asian cities today are immense. Over the last five years alone, their population has been growing by around 100,000 every day. Experts predict that China will have well over 200 cities with more than a million people by 2025. The figure for 2011 is 90. By comparison, there are 25 cities in Europe whose populations exceed one million. Sustainability is therefore no longer simply the latest fashion for urban planners — it’s a minimal requirement. According to the Asian Development Bank, Asian cities need to build 20,000 new apartment units and 250 kilometers of new roads every day — not to mention the infrastructure for transporting an additional six million liters of drinking water per day — if they are going to manage this population increase.

Singapore has done a very good job of mastering these challenges. It achieved the best result in the Asian Green City Index, while Hong Kong, Osaka, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, and Yokohama received above-average ratings. “The analysis of cities in Asia very clearly shows that higher income doesn’t necessarily translate into higher resource consumption,” says Jan Friederich, who headed the research team for the EIU study. Although it’s true that resource consumption rises sharply up to an annual per capita gross domestic product of around €15,000, it declines again as per capita income increases further.

Among the more positive findings of the study is the fact that at 4.6 tons, average annual per capita CO2 emissions in the 22 Asian cities studied are lower than in Europe (5.2 tons of CO2 per capita per year). Asian cities also produce 375 kg of garbage annually per capita, much less than cities in Latin America (465 kg) and Europe (511 kg). However, Asian cities need to catch up when it comes to air pollution and renewable energy sources, which account for only 11 percent of total electricity production in Asia. That’s far below the figure for Latin America, where extensive use of hydroelectric power makes for a 64 percent share.

The citizens of Singapore are very proud that their city-state has been able to make the leap from the Third World to the First World in just half a century (see Pictures of the Future, Spring 2010, Green Test Bed). This was made possible by a far-sighted strategy involving systematic investments in education and research. Today the country is one of the leading centers for water purification technology (see article "Desalination: Plunging Price"). Singapore also has one of the world’s best public transport networks and has earned a reputation as a pioneer in the development and utilization of innovative government administration systems (see article "Real-Time Government").

One of the city-state’s most recent initiatives for further improving environmental and climate protection and reducing energy consumption is a regulation stipulating that new buildings must comply with even higher standards for energy efficiency and environmental friendliness in the future. Singapore already has a reference project for this, the “City Square Mall,” a shopping complex that demonstrates that expansive buildings can also be efficient. Sophisticated sensor controls for lighting, ventilation, and air conditioning at the 65,000-square-meter mall generate annual electricity savings of 11 million kilowatt hours, the equivalent of the power consumed by 2,000 four-room apartments. To ensure that everyone knows that this really is the case, video screens at the mall display the facility’s real-time electricity and water consumption figures, as well as other parameters.

The impact of such projects extends far beyond Singapore. That’s because buildings account for 40 percent of global energy consumption, which means that the savings achieved with state-of-the-art technologies have a huge effect. The potential for improvement here is being demonstrated by Siemens in seven of its own offices and factories in India, where the company will invest €1.7 million over the next two years to make its buildings state-of-the-art, leading to a planned 15 percent increase in energy efficiency. This modernization is not only environmentally sound and climate-friendly; it also makes economic sense, because the lower energy consumption will allow Siemens to recoup its investment in less than four years.

Cutting Energy Use by One Third. Siemens is also modernizing buildings belonging to South Korea’s largest department store chain, Shinsegae, which is based in Seoul. More efficient air conditioners, electricity supplies, and lighting systems will enable Shinsegae to cut electricity consumption by one third and reduce operating costs by 20 percent. Siemens has implemented similar projects in many Asian cities. The Olympic swimming stadium for the Olympic Games in Beijing and the Chinese Pavilion at the Expo in Shanghai were equipped with Siemens building technologies — as were the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Taipei 101 skyscraper, and the Pacific Place high-rise building in Jakarta.

Transport systems are the second-largest energy consumers in cities. Owning a car is as cherished a dream for Asia’s middle class as it is for people in established industrialized nations. But the dream usually turns into a trafficjam nightmare in Asian megacities, so urban planners are building subways and commuter rail systems that offer an attractive alternative to automobiles. The larger and more complex the systems get, however, the greater are the demands placed on the control technology needed to coordinate them and ensure extremely short intervals between trains.

Bangkok offers a good example of success in this area. The number of cars in the Thai capital has doubled since 1990 and now totals 5.5 million. At the end of the 1990s, urban planners in Bangkok therefore commissioned Siemens to build the city’s first rapid transit rail system — the Skytrain BTS (see Pictures of the Future, Spring 2006, Ticket to the Future). The 23-kilometer line carries 400,000 passengers a day, and its success led to a follow-up order for Bangkok’s first subway, which now transports 180,000 people each day.

In 2010 Siemens completed its third rapid transit rail line for Bangkok, which links the new Suvarnabhumi Airport with the city center. As a result, over 600,000 people a day who would otherwise take buses, taxis, or their own cars now use Bangkok’s rail systems, easing the burden on both the city’s streets and the environment. Siemens has carried out similar projects in many Asian cities. Kuala Lumpur’s airport rail line uses Siemens control systems, as do West Rail in Hong Kong and the new subway lines in Beijing and Nanjing.

All of these examples show that two elements are always required for contemporary urban planning: on the one hand, political will and farsightedness on the part of the decision-makers; on the other, technical innovations that enable the construction of an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, and economical infrastructure. Asia’s megacities can count on both.