Differdange, with its about 30.000 inhabitants, is the third biggest town in Luxembourg located in the south of the country in the border triangle with Belgium and France. Since the 19th century, Differdange has shown its strength with the start of industrialization with local mining operations and one of Luxembourg’s biggest blast furnaces. With its economic development, Differdange offered to be a new home for people from all around the world with 118 nationalities making up more than 50 percent of the population. Diversity comes with socioeconomic challenges, which Differdange had to manage in its past and which are a factor in reaching climate neutrality goals.
Differdange has set the goal of producing locally and sustainably 100% of its need in electricity (excluding industry consumption) with the participation of its population and private sector by 2030. Data and IT platforms are essential to translate the relevance of our long-term goal and to better understand the potential of renewable energy in the city and its carbon accounting. IT platforms can enable better data visualization, comparison of future scenarios and screening of the city’s existing infrastructure that could support the development of renewable energy (e.g. available rooftop surface). Furthermore, Differdange recognizes the importance of citizens’ engagement tools in including its diverse population and industry in the challenge, creating a sense of ownership and shared responsibility, ensuring a successful and inclusive transition.
Differdange needs a socio-technical system that allows the City to better engage with available data on energy in order to increase its leverage and credibility when promoting renewable energy production to citizens and industry. Data visualisation solutions that could streamline ongoing developments and allow future simulations are envisaged. In addition, citizen engagement tools are needed in order to create new ways of engaging both the very diverse and growing population of the City and its vibrant industrial stakeholders.
To this end, CLIMABOROUGH supports the City on its innovative public procurement process that will start on July 17.
To have more information about the Differdange challenge, you can read the dedicated section.
