Deadline: 11 February 2025 (23:59:59 CET)
Through the NetZeroCities City Expert Support Facility, NetZeroCities / Climate-KIC are requesting quotations for expert support to Roma Capitale to advance and solidify the strong multi-level collaborative structure required to implement the Climate City Contract.
About the request
Roma Capitale has finalised the Climate City Contract (CCC) and aims to receive the Mission Label in 2025. Starting from the establishment of an internal Climate Office within the public body in 2021, Rome’s path toward the Mission Label started in 2022 with the launch of an engagement strategy that involves the public agencies, the private sector stakeholders, the Universities and research centers, and the citizens. The goal has been to accelerate a systemic transition and foster a multi-level approach to face climate change challenges.
Through the engagement process:
1. Public bodies within the Municipality were involved by the Climate Office through the definition of the internal public-sector Transition Team, which ensures involvement from across departments to manage the interdependence of the climate objectives.
2. External entities such as big companies, small businesses or business associations were involved, on a voluntary basis, to outline their contributions to a more sustainable city through changes in their daily operations. Their official involvement was launched in spring 2024 through a public Call of Interest with the aim of attracting the largest number of subjects within a complex and heterogeneous context. To take part in the Call, the stakeholders were required to provide documentation noting their commitment to sign the CCC draft as well as the initiatives and projects they plan to carry out by 2030. The procedure lasted 45 days, collecting 75 signatures and 490 actions.
3. In addition to the engagement of private companies, the Municipality has signed many partnerships and agreements with universities, research centres, and sectorial agencies, both at national and local level, to foster new initiatives in the fields of ecological transition, training, and green technologies.
4. Finally, engaged citizens are at the core of Rome’s climate transition mission, playing a critical and powerful role in spreading knowledge and fostering individual change in the territory.
Implementation
Moving forward into implementation of the CCC, the main outcome of this expert support request is fortifying and expanding upon the multi-actor path established during the CCC drafting process. The engagement and orchestration of a diverse range of stakeholders in Rome to align and take ambitious actions towards climate mitigation is critical for the necessary transformative change. This level of societal engagement for climate action is complex and will require creative thinking and adaptable, innovative processes.
As part of the CCC’s multi-actor engagement and active participation, the Municipality is focused on breaking down siloes and triggering innovative forms of collaboration and involvement among stakeholders and the entire eco-system of actors. Establishing and maintaining a strong multi-level collaborative structure with a distributed leadership approach is the core unlocking factor and fundamental lever of change for Rome to pursue ambitious climate goals by 2030.
The ongoing and sustained participation of stakeholders will require incentives, well-defined motivations, and aligned buy-in. The engagement needs to lead to concrete actions that will justify stakeholders’ continued involvement as well as attract new stakeholders who contribute new actions. The Municipality sees a clear need to take on the role of facilitator and help stakeholders contribute towards the city’s climate transition.
Key Components of Support
The support provided to Rome by the expert supplier shall include the following services:
1. Stakeholder engagement:
(a) Development and facilitation of workshops to identify stakeholders’ needs related to implementing actions in the CCC and connect those needs with decision-makers’ plans;
(b) The possible identification of new, related actions to propose including in the CCC;
(c) Clarification and refinement of the actions’ impacts and co-benefits;
(d) Solidify a strong multi-level collaborative structure with a distributed leadership approach; and
(e) Increase awareness of the climate action priorities among organizations and companies in Rome including through the addition of stakeholders collaborating on and committing to Rome’s climate goals. The format of these workshops will need to be further defined in partnership with Roma Capitale and NetZeroCities. While some will need to take place in-person, it is possible that some could take place online.
2. The Municipality and its partly owned companies (energy, water, and waste sector): Development and facilitation of roundtables to further improve how these entities work together, to bring forward the common strategies set within the CCC as well as advance strategic projects within the municipality. These roundtables can be delivered in hybrid mode (i.e. in-person and online).
3. Technical workshops and/or webinars for a multi-actor audience (mostly stakeholders) focused on energy consumption, energy savings, energy efficiency, and RES in the building sectors to support the co-design of the portfolio of actions and projects. These workshops will focus on increasing the attendees’ technical understanding of the topics, including the financial incentives, subsidies, and financing options available in order to take action and progress project development. The aim of these workshops is to assist stakeholders in implementing the actions identified in the CCC as well as surfacing new actions.
4. Continuous support to Ufficio Clima and Roma Capitale Transition Team to address learning and insights from #1-3 when navigating the governance process for implementing the CCC’s actions.
Considerations
The services outlined above will require strategic planning and coordination, taking into account where overlap across areas of focus and types of actors is necessary. The stakeholders engaged to date include local companies as well as national and international companies with offices in Rome; environmental and social activist organisations as well as profit-oriented companies. The stakeholders will be focused on a wide range of actions requiring facilitation to ensure alignment, optimizing for synergies and managing areas of conflict. It will also require careful review of the actions in the CCC and those that emerge to understand how to best orchestrate this work.
A large portion of the 490 actions is focused on the built environment and energy as these sectors make up the majority of Rome’s emission profile. Therefore, it is intended that the technical workshops focus primarily on building energy efficiency and renewable energy. However, other topics for these technical workshops may emerge during the 12-month period of this scope.
While the Cities Mission focuses on climate change mitigation, Rome is also advancing adaptation priorities, and it is important that the City’s climate transition narrative does not disconnect or isolate the two focus areas. The engagement processes with stakeholders and municipally owned companies will thus necessarily focus on climate action generally, integrating both mitigation and adaptation.
Scope Coordination
The work will be delivered by a team that includes the selected expert supplier, as well as partners from the Cities Mission platform / NetZeroCities consortium. The selected expert supplier will be the clear lead in supporting Rome and will be responsible for the success of the work described above. It is intended that the supplier has experience working with stakeholders, local governments, and national ministries in Italy; that it has relationships with private and municipal companies; and that it has local knowledge of Rome’s context.
In addition, the Cities Mission Platform will also actively support this work, and the selected supplier is expected to engage not only with Rome, but also with partners from the Cities Mission Platform / NetZeroCities consortium. The NetZeroCities Consortium partner is resourced already and does not have to be represented in a financial offer from the supplier. The exact ways of working between the expert supplier and NetZeroCities consortium partner will need to be clearly and efficiently defined to ensure maximum efficiency, with sign-off from the City of Rome as part of launching the scope of work.
The breakdown of work between the two parties is generally summarized as follows:
Selected expert supplier:
- The clear lead on all the work described above.
- The lead in helping the City think through how to best bring various stakeholders together.
- The estimated maximum workload is 5 person months.
Consortium Partner will:
- Work with the Supplier (and City) in designing the stakeholder engagement processes.
- Help orient the Supplier to relevant materials and resources already created by the Cities Mission Platform. This will involve close coordination with NetZeroCities City Support individuals to ensure alignment and streamlining of workstreams.
- Advise the Supplier and City in developing the overall collaboration structure including defining concrete strategies and providing methodologies for implementing innovative forms of collaboration and participation among the entire eco-system of actors.
- Support the Supplier and City in the creation of narratives and communication techniques linked to community- and city-building, collective action, and sustained engagement.
- Provide strategic input into the work, drawing on experiences within the Mission and examples from other mission cities (including from NetZeroCities’ just transition domain working group to ensure this is an overarching principle guiding the work).
- Ensure individuals can engage in the work in Italian.
- The contribution of the Consortium partner is estimated to be 2 person months.
The number of in-person and online workshops that will be required to carry this work forward is something that has to be developed and agreed upon when launching this work. The working assumption at this stage is that there will be a mix of in-person workshops, online workshops, and some additional outreach to smaller subsets of stakeholders. However, there is currently no prescribed number of workshops, and this will require some flexibility. The selected supplier should include in their proposal a description of how they currently envision structuring the mix of in-person and online workshops, as well as additional outreach. The proposal should also specify the number of in-person and online workshops that are budgeted in their proposal.
It should be noted that the potential suppliers responding to this scope have the option of partnering with other organisations (i.e., building a consortium) to present a joint proposal for the work described.
Climate-KIC reserves the right to award the contract to more than one third party supplier to achieve suitable capabilities for the scope of work described. Bidders are encouraged to make it clear in their proposal what expertise and services they can provide in line with the scope of work described, if not the whole scope.
The work is intended to start in March 2025, to be most intense in the first six months after commencement, and to continue for 12 months.
For clarity, the following services are specifically “Out of Scope”:
- Direct written updates to the Climate City Contract documents
- Securing funding or financial commitments from or for stakeholders
- Legal or regulatory advice.
Please find all further relevant information including full scope, out of scope, milestones, and all related information below.
Timeline and additional information
Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals by 11 February 2025 (23:59:59 CET) to Radka Reil, CESF Manager [CESF@netzerocities.eu]. Proposals should include and address all specific requirements related to the request which can be found below.