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needed by analyzing in real time the surrounding conditions. The illumination level provided by the City of Oslo depends on the time of day, seasons, weather conditions, or the density of the traffic, as cars also generate themselves lighting. Thanks to this dynamic lighting, the City of Oslo has saved between 40 and 70 % of electricity over the previous lamps and expect to improve again this efficiency by extending this technology to all the 70,000 street lamps in Oslo. According to the city, such an extension could help reduce yearly the electricity consumption of 20 GWh and the CO₂ emission of 7,000 tons²⁸. At the same time, streets are safer and more comfortable: thanks to a better visibility for drivers and pedestrians, enlightening streets helps improve traffic safety and to reduce crime²⁹. So, the dynamic lighting makes Oslo citizens feel more secure.

      Oslo’s dynamic street lighting is not the only example of the smart green project developed by communities to improve living conditions of their inhabitants. Most of them pursue the same aim, whether it is to develop smart grids in order to optimize the energy in Issy-les-Moulinneaux in France³⁰, in Ashton Hayes Smart Village in United Kingdom³¹, in the City of Castellón in Spain³² or elsewhere in Europe and in the world³³; whether it is to develop climate-neutral public transport like in Oslo³⁴, or even to improve only the efficiency of public transport to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and save time for citizens; or whether it is to implement smart meters to detect water leaks to prevent flood and water damage in homes or reduce water consumption in the Miami-Dade County Park³⁵.

      In this regard, we should underline how substantial is the water loss from leaking pipelines in some cities (25 % in UK cities, and even nearly 50 % in London; 40 % in Montreal; 35 % in Seoul; 50 % in Vietnam cities³⁶ or 25 % in Rome³⁷).

      Some cities try to combine several smart green projects, like Oslo which plans to become a zero-emission city by 2050. Similarly, Copenhagen intends to “become a Smart city that offers the world’s best urban environment and a unique urban life. To achieve this goal, [they] have planned four milestones: green and blue capital carbon-neutral, clean and healthy city, and the world’s best city for cyclists”³⁸.

      § 2 – Smarter Green Communities in a Better Legal Framework

      A. By Guaranteeing a Right to Information

      The main areas of the smart green communities are energy, water, transportation, and waste. Smart green communities are, in all of these cases, those which enable efficiency of their public services thanks to the informational society; those which have all the infrastructure to use data at their best in order to save energy and water or to regulate the traffic and the pollution thanks to a public transport optimization. We can thus assert that the information is the very core of smart green communities. Its high value is, however, the result of its use and reuse by public administrations, citizens or companies in order to develop new public services or improve the existing ones. In other words, the improvement of living conditions is the result of the use and reuse of data that are collected by public administrations or by companies.

      As a consequence, the success of smart green communities relies on the fluidity of the information that is generated in this framework. To put it in another way, smart green communities are not only cities that are connected and that use ICTs in order to improve the efficiency of their environmental policies and to reduce the Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Smart green communities are rather cities that organize and optimize their environmental policies around the information. It is important, therefore, to ensure a smooth flow of information.

      Indeed, a community may be connected or even hyper-connected without necessarily having information flowing in a useful way and an appropriate use. The risk in the informational society is less to have a lack of information than to face a profusion of information. This is especially true for smart green communities because they regularly issue data relating to water consumption, electricity consumption or transportation. So the profusion of information may inhibit users to access on time to the information they need.

      For example, public transport schedules may be available throughout the day, but they have less interest if they are not updated in real time to provide information on current incidents and delays to come. Similarly, electricity meters or water meters can provide information, but they are not smart if they do it, one or twice a year as it is mostly currently done. That is why smart meters collect data several times in one hour. Smart meters rely, however, not only on the dissemination of data, but also on the capacity to analyze them in real time and to send feedback to the consumer in order to explain him how to reduce his/her electric or water consumption. If meters are not able to do so, the wealth of information loses, therefore, its usefulness. We should note that in the French case of Linky³⁹, the feedback will come not only from the analysis of the data collected by the electric meter, but also by analyzing the tweets and comments sent by the consumers.

      Thus, a community, even hyper-connected, which is unable to ensure a good flow of information, cannot be regarded as a smart one. Whereas a connected city aims to decompartmentalize data by putting an end to information silos, an informational city aims to ensure relevant real-time dissemination of public information to stakeholders. The informational city is therefore a further step in the process of enhancing data by ensuring greater fluidity of the flow of public information, both internally and externally.

      For this reason, one of the features of smart green communities is their ability to include their citizens in the process. This inclusion relies on the association of citizens to community environmental policies. In this regard, the City of Oslo has adopted an interesting methodology by opening its environmental strategy to its citizens and more widely to every person interested. The Norwegian capital considers that “reaching the target of becoming a Zero-Emission City will require new ideas and efforts from everyone”⁴⁰.

      This inclusion is also achieved by reinforcing transparency and making the information available for citizens in order to give them more choices and help them to take the smartest and greenest decisions. Since they are based on the exploitation of data, smart green communities raise some questions as regards both the right to participation and the right to information. In this last case, communities have to answer at least to the following legal issues: to what type of information does a citizen have the right to access? Can the community invoke the right to secrecy in some circumstances? What are legal blockages to a smoothly flow of information and to its use and reuse by stakeholders or by third parties? What kind of data should be opened by the smart green community? What are the rights of consumers, of public administration or of third parties in the use and reuse of data collected within the implementation of green public services?

      The aim is at the end to make the most people and companies benefit from the revolution of smart green communities. The signatories’ will of the 2009 Green digital charter to collaborate “with industry to support greener production and logistics and using green procurement”⁴¹ follows this logic. The same applies to the statement made in 2011 by the OECD Secretary-General. According to Angel Gurría, “governments in both developed and emerging economies must empower companies and individuals as actors in the quest for green growth. This will mean removing obstacles to the introduction and commercialization of new technologies and the development of new modes of production. It will mean encouraging people to work and live differently. Energy and transport will be among the first sectors to target greener growth.”⁴²

      B. By Protecting the Right to Privacy in a Greener Environment

      As the improvement of living conditions in a smart green community is linked to the data collection and analysis, it is important to closely monitor this process in order to be sure that it respects our right to privacy.

      With the open data and above all the big data, the risk to infringe on a person’s privacy is not fictitious but really exists. For instance, in France, the electric smart meter of EDF called “Linky” collect the load curve every 10 minutes on the request of the consumer⁴³. If Linky has started to collect some data in 300,000 homes, the process is, however, at the beginning. First, the aim is to cover all the territory by 2020. The challenge is real because this objective means the installation of 35 million smart electric meters in 15 years. Second, EDF is studying how to improve

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