The Power of Partnerships: Forging Alliances to Scale and Speed Up the Impact of the Cities Mission

Just as cities are building partnerships to connect, exchange, and create knowledge and activities across their city, NetZeroCities is doing the same as the platform for the EU Cities Mission. But how does their will to cooperate relate to climate ambition?  

When it comes to cities reaching their climate goals, radical deep collaboration is not only a ‘nice to have’ – there is no route to climate neutrality without it. 

From collaboration to decarbonisation?

In Europe’s journey towards becoming climate neutral, regardless of their ambition, no single actor has all the knowledge or resources to reach this goal alone.  

As the European Commission describes it:  

“EU Missions are a coordinated effort by the Commission to pool the necessary resources in terms of policies and regulations, as well as other activities. They also aim to mobilise and activate public and private actors [and] engage with citizens to boost societal uptake of new solutions and approaches.” 

Collaboration, therefore, is one of the central principles of Mission projects, where diverse kinds of expertise are combined to form new solutions that are tested and iterated to reach a common overarching goal. 

Mission Cities are building partnerships within their own city – for example, with citizens, civil society, academia, and the private sector – to generate knowledge, ideas, support, and resources for the financing and implementation of solutions and the actions contained within their CCCs.

Connecting and spreading knowledge from implementation

As the consortium managing the EU Cities Mission ‘platform’, NetZeroCities supports the 112 cities striving to become climate neutral by 2030, adding capacity for them to innovate and experiment. But it is also making connections with other projects and organisations across Europe to share learning and encourage synergy in working towards the Mission’s goals. 

“It’s fair to say that more than a hundred EU-funded projects and initiatives are actively working with cities, each contributing to the Cities Mission’s objectives from different angles, such as mobility, the circular economy, the built environment, and energy systems,” says Tarek El Azzouzi, NetZeroCities Partnership Manager at Climate-KIC. 

“Given the wide range of thematic areas involved in achieving Europe’s carbon-neutral goal — and the complexity of topics which can all be further divided into sub-topics — building connections with these projects is crucial to the Mission’s success. This approach not only facilitates effective knowledge sharing but also seeks to create valuable synergies, both of which form the cornerstone of the Memorandum of Understanding between NetZeroCities and its partner projects.” 

This can build common learning on key topics for climate neutrality that stretch across projects and organisations, like technology and infrastructure; governance and policy; finance and business models; learning and capabilities; participation, culture, and democracy; and social innovation. 

“In the race towards climate neutrality, partnerships are not just a strategy but a necessity. By working with diverse EU projects and initiatives, we ensure that knowledge, tools and resources are not only shared but amplified to achieve the Cities Mission’s ambitious goals,” says Silvia Ghiretti, Project and Policy Manager at ERRIN. 

And once this knowledge is generated – including via projects mentioned here and others that NetZeroCities is partnering with – cites can distribute it throughout the network to other Mission Cities and beyond, contributing directly to one of the main aims of the EU Cities Mission for them to act as experimentation and innovation hubs, enabling all European cities to follow and reach climate neutrality by 2050. 

Spotlight on some current and new partnerships

CIVITAS – CIVITAS signed NetZeroCities’ first MoU with another EU-funded project and is instrumental in helping cities design and implement innovative mobility solutions that align with climate-neutral goals.  The partnership outlines how the two initiatives will work together on joint learning opportunities and where respective experts can contribute to their counterpart’s work, as well as how progress towards jointly agreed objectives is monitored. 

NetworkNature+ – One of the earliest memoranda of understanding (MoU) that NetZeroCities’signed was with NetworkNature+, a resource for nature-based solutions. Given the interconnectedness of climate and biodiversity, the exchange of knowledge and experiences – as well as the clear narrative that climate goals will not be achieved without protecting nature – is a key added value of this collaboration. Specific objectives of the collaboration include sharing learnings from innovative financing approaches for climate and nature-based solutions actions, providing access to and streamlining governance instruments like Climate City Contracts and Urban Nature Plans, and communicating practical examples of integrated policy-making and implementation.  

Covenant of Mayors – Launched in 2008, the Covenant of Mayors, supported by the European Commission, offers local governments a standardised way to take action on local energy through, for example, a common reporting framework for emissions (MyCovenant) and knowledge exchange. As signatories to the Covenant, they are committed to implementing EU objectives on climate and energy – aligning them strongly with NetZeroCities and the EU Cities Mission. As well as sharing partners or coordinators at a local level, greater collaboration between the initiatives could lead to shared or complementary efforts and avoid duplication. 

CapaCITIES – The CapaCITIES project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme, supports national authorities in 15 European countries to enhance governance structures that provide assistance to cities, enabling them to achieve their climate neutrality goals. CapaCITIES focuses on fostering multi-level collaboration and designing innovative governance solutions critical to the Mission’s success. The project builds on the foundation established in the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership, an intergovernmental research and innovation programme with over 60 partners from 28 countries and the European Commission (EC). 

Philea – One partnership that stretches the possibilities of collaboration yet further is with the European association of philanthropy, Philea, which includes associations representing 7,500 foundations. Their contribution as “ecosystem activators” – making use of established local recognition and relationships across sectors – is potentially unique and highly impactful as a “convenor, broker, and multiplier of the ambitious impact that the Cities Mission must achieve.”  

If you’d like to find out more about our partnership work and how we are forging alliances to scale and speed up the impact of the EU Cities Mission, you can see our partnerships here and  take a look at the Policy and Partnerships Linktree here.