Funding for cities is changing while their responsibilities are increasing – but to shape this change, cities must take part in the process now, says Natalia Lewandowska from NetZeroCities’ partners ICLEI Europe. Recent experience in Poland can show them how.  As the European Union moves closer to defining its next long-term budget one thing is becoming clear: the rules of the game are changing. For cities where climate action is implemented, tested, and scaled, the coming years will require not only new projects, but a fundamentally new mindset around funding.  Against this backdrop, a Better Funding Dialogue (BFD) in Poland offered a structured process to help cities, ministries, [...]

Working within the EU Cities Mission requires both operations and innovation – but teams can get stuck on only one and miss the complementary benefits of the other. To help them overcome this familiar problem, NetZeroCities partners from the Technical University of Madrid introduce a method to examine and redirect their activities. During a rainy spring in Spain in 2025, players from central and city government, business, academia and other institutions were coming together to advance an ambitious goal and speed up building renovations on a large scale. But they met a familiar constraint: responsibilities and [...]

Research increasingly shows that energy and resource efficiency and technological innovation alone cannot solve our climate and environmental crises. Major actors like the IPCC and the EU Horizon Programme are therefore turning their eyes towards how resource demand can be reduced, while ensuring that everyone’s needs are met. A new NetZeroCities report by partner Demos Helsinki takes a deeper look at what sufficiency policy could mean for cities, especially when it comes to housing, mobility and food.   ‘Sufficiency’ has gained attention in recent years as a way of decreasing emissions and reducing environmental footprints while securing sustainable wellbeing for all.   A key takeaway of our report is that sufficiency offers cities a necessary complement to efficiency and technological innovation. Adopting sufficiency principles can guide cities to design fair and effective [...]

Imagine an island powered entirely by its residents, a grocery store fighting food waste while building a community, or a network of affordable homes shielded from market speculation. These aren’t utopian dreams – they're real examples in communities taking control of their own resources and rewriting the rules of local finance. NetZeroCities partners DemSoc take a closer look.  Across Europe, community-owned enterprises are showing that collective action can fund sustainable, inclusive, and resilient local economies in ways traditional markets often cannot.  Unlike conventional businesses, these initiatives are owned and run by the very communities they serve, ensuring that value circulates locally. They take many forms – such as housing cooperatives, mobility initiatives, [...]

The Swedish city of Lund has a unique perspective in the EU Cities Mission – how has it shaped its climate activities and learning? In a recent interview, Tommy Bengtsson and Juliet Leonette from the city’s climate team explain.  Of the many valuable opportunities available through the EU Cities Mission Cities, the chance to learn from peers in other cities is unique. Over 180 cities have already participated in peer-learning programmes through the Mission, collaborating not only with near neighbours but across more distant European borders too.   Lund, a mid-sized city on the southern tip of [...]

When cities embrace bike-friendly design, they not only reduce emissions but encourage healthier communities, calmer streets and a culture of sustainability. Acting EU Cities Mission Board Chair Paulo Ferrão and board member Françoise Guaspare reflect on the significance of a citizen-driven initiative to promote the European Declaration on Cycling at COP30. Not all roads to COP30 in Belém, Brazil were created equal. This was especially true for hundreds of riders in the COP Bike Ride, a citizen initiative that carried ten proposals to leverage cycling for climate protection to November’s  UN Climate Conference in Belém. The [...]

What happens when you bring together Albanian municipalities, a Mission City, national institutions, academia, and NetZeroCities representatives? A great co-creation process begins! Natalia Lewandowska from ICLEI Europe writes that the stage is now set for establishing an Albanian national platform to accelerate climate neutrality.  Albania’s path toward EU accession has placed sustainability, climate action, and urban development high on the national agenda. As the country aligns its policies with the European Green Deal and the EU’s climate objectives, cities have a central role to play in driving this transformation – but mobility remains one of Albania’s [...]

Will we run out of the materials we need for clean energy generation? How do we balance adapting to a changing climate with mitigating and preventing its worst effects?  And what role could AI play in achieving climate neutrality? These are some of the key questions facing cities and, in three upcoming papers introduced in this post, NetZeroCities  partners Dark Matter Labs, Demos Helsinki and Polimi take a deeper look. Anticipating future problems and opportunities should be a priority for organisation’s risk management and to inform their decision making – and cities are no exception.  Yet [...]

Can a single neighbourhood become a testing ground for a city’s net-zero future? Milan’s Climate City Contract team is putting the theory into practice in the northeastern district of Adriano-Crescenzago-Lambro and report here on how urban experimentation, social equity, and ecological regeneration can work hand in hand to accelerate the climate transition.  Molecules of change  When facing a huge challenge, ‘start small’ can be helpful advice: breaking the problem down into manageable chunks can help to avoid becoming overwhelmed, while the mini successes of each completed task can build momentum and make progress more noticeable.  But [...]

One began their Mission City journey from ‘less than zero,’ while another is a former European Green Capital – but all share a similar need to meet their climate ambitions. They told a meeting of experts from across Europe how they’re changing their cities.  What does it take to become a European Green Capital? Measured on seven indicators, including air quality, biodiversity, and climate change mitigation, any winning city will be pursuing high environmental and sustainability standards.   Yet, even with the knowledge acquired through this work, the challenge of climate neutrality requires another level of ambition [...]