Pamplona, the city with three boroughs

Pamplona is said to be the city with the highest quality of life in Spain and is the economic and political centre of Navarre. Moreover, its region is highly regarded for developing its energy grid based on renewable energy sources (RES). As of the moment, it covers more than 80% of the region’s electrical consumption.

Other than playing a key role in introducing RES to its citizens, the city of Pamplona is quite active in implementing smart and sustainable solutions for its communities. These are aligned with the Sustainable Development Plan of the City, the Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) under the Covenant of Mayors, the e-Vehicle Action Plan of Pamplona, and the Navarra Energy Plan 2030.

One of Pamplona’s strategic goals is to empower and to protect the citizens by introducing greener solutions that promote fairness, social inclusion.

Main_square_plaza del castillo 7

25

square km of land

198K

inhabitants

1926

year when Ernest Hemingway wrote of its bullfighting festival in his novel, The Sun Also Rises

3

boroughs merged in 1423 to form the modern city of Pamplona

All the actions in Pamplona

Energy-efficient solutions in the form of ICT, renewable energy resources and other unconventional techniques will be introduced to the old buildings and social housing. These will provide more sustainable energy usage and heating system for the people to relish. District heating networks will be renovated to provide cleaner energy to the city.

Accessible transport in the form of electric vehicles will be available for everyone to use. These include e-taxis, e-cars, e-bikes and e-buses and a number of charging points and chargers in communal garages will be installed in selected areas.

A detailed list of the solutions are listed according to the different fields:

  • ENERGY:
    • nZEB (renovation works & new construction), HEMs and BEMs in several neighbourhoods;
    • Instalation of Active Roofs: Plug & Play;
    • Biomass District heating in Txantrea, CHP with ORC technology;
    • Microgrid in Ripagaina combined with smart lighting;
    • Heat recovery in the municipal Data Center;
    • Heat recovery at urban scale: monitor and analysis of the potential use of water & waste water networks to integrate heat exchanger to provide heating & DHW through heat pumps;
    • Smart lighting;
    • Solar taxi fast charging station.
  • E-MOBILITY:
    • Promoting E-vehicles: Subsidies for taxis to shift to EVs (objective: 30 e-taxis); Public e-car-sharing with 20 e-vehicles for civil-servants; public procurement of Evs; subsidies and free toll charges for Evs;
    • E-bike sharing system with 100 bikes;
    • Compatible e-charging points for inter-regional e-mobility;
    • E-charging infrastructure: V2G; 40 e-charging points in the streets + 20 in hospitals, shopping centres, hotels, private companies, etc; 3 Fast charging points for taxis; Electrification of private parkings;
    • Implementation of a last Mile delivery service with e-bikes;
    • Regulation measures: Free parking in downtown and free access for EVs to priority lanes shared with buses and taxis; development of a City App with integrated and georeferenced information of city infrastructures.
  • ICT: An Open City Platform with a holistic approach that will integrate all the urban elements presented above.
  • INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM AND BUSINESS MODELS:
    • Validation of Smart Business Models (PPP, Energy Performance Contr., Innovative Public Procurement, etc);
    • A Green Public Utility: promoting and aggregating the supply and commercialization of locally generated RES;
    • Exploitation of North district heating system;
    • Promotion of the development of innovative start-ups.
  • STAKEHOLDERS AND CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT:
    • Citizens’ acceptance and consensus building, through Citizen information activities, localised citizen engagement activities, “JOIN STARDUST” program linked with e-participation tools etc.
    • Sustainable Behaviour Change Gaming Tool

 

SMART IRUÑA LAB
Smart Iruña Lab is a programme launched by Pamplona City Council to allow new entrepreneurs to test their technological solutions in a real environment. The programme was first launched in 2018 to develope public-private collaboration agreements. This would enable Pamplona City Council to test and trial Smart-City solutions.

Specific objectives of the programme:

  • To develop Smart projects in areas such as: circular economy, environmental sustainability, accessibility, energy efficiency, social equity, health, etc.
  • To provide input to the Framework Collaboration Agreement in the field of the Smart City of Pamplona City Council.
  • To identify project-companies, linked to local entrepreneurship, to develop the identified projects.
  • To support the identified initiatives through via technical assistance, communication, networking, etc.
  • To identify and describe a system of indicators to assess the work done and its continuity.

In the first edition of the programme, five technological pilot projects were selected to be tested as Smart City solutions in a real environment in Pamplona: LED luminaires for improving road safety (STOPLED), solutions for early warning of pests in urban parks (AGROPESTALERT), radar sensors to monitor different transport means in an intelligent way (uRAD), technological solutions for an intelligent irrigation (Smart AQUA) and continuous monitoring of indoor air quality (INBIOT).

Discover the projects by watching our playlist!

In the second edition of the programme, five technological pilot projects were selected to be tested as Smart City solutions in a real environment in Pamplona. i3i Ingeniería Avanzada will collect data in real time at most used parking areas via sensors and a wireless communication platform for behavioural study and disseminated to citizens. ‘MendiTech’ project will monitor the movements of the vehicles within the city and create more sustainable and safer intelligent city models in the future at a massive scale, providing information such as counting, speed, acceleration, directions, number of axles, and weight of vehicles in motion. The ‘Kunak Green Move’ project will introduce an air quality measurement technology to evaluate sustainable mobility actions and impacts of the daily habits in relation to the air quality at a local scale. ‘Defcon8 S.L.’ aims to raise awareness of efficient water consumption and will offer value proposals such as statistical processing of hot and cold water flow and temperature data, the possibility of setting a daily consumption target, and a meter of total daily expenditure or a leak detection device. The Smarth-Prop proposal comes from Greece and will introduce an intelligent self-learning and self-adjusting solution based on artificial intelligence algorithms to automate the detection of energy consumption behaviour, the thermal modelling of a building, the prediction and optimisation of energy demand, and which can generate savings in building expenditure of up to 40%.

Discover the projects by watching our video!