Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz On a warm afternoon in Tei neighbourhood, in Bucharest’s District 2, the city feels like many other capitals in Europe. Traffic crawls along busy roads, tower blocks face Lake Tei — one of the six lakes that form a chain across the district - and students hurry across the campus of the Technical University of Civil Engineering.  Not far away, the atmosphere is different. Inside a nearby hall, long tables are covered with maps, tracing paper and markers. Residents, students, planners, NGO staff and municipal officials sit together in mixed groups. They talk about how climate change is showing up in their neighbourhood and what could be [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz In city halls across Europe, climate teams are rewriting the cast list for the transition. They still track emissions and technology options, but the key work now starts with a different question: which businesses, utilities, investors and employers have to be in the room if any of this is going to happen in the real world?  More and more cities are realising that they cannot achieve net zero alone. This shift in mindset is becoming increasingly apparent. Climate neutrality is no longer framed as something city halls impose on businesses and citizens, but as something that they work on together.   Recent NetZeroCities work shows that a climate-neutral future is achieved by residents, public servants, the private sector and other actors. One of the [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz Visitors arriving in Espoo often notice the scenery first. The city sits on 58 kilometres of seashore, with 165 islands and forests around. That landscape is not a postcard backdrop. To protect it, the city has committed to becoming climate neutral by 2030. Its strategy has been to make climate action a shared effort across the city, bringing businesses, civil society and citizens into the work, while developing an investment framework that helps turn green ambition into investable projects.  The scale of the task is stark. Espoo’s target is an 80% cut in emissions by 2030, but updated scenarios show current measures delivering only 60%. The city’s population has almost [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz In cities, every tram line, courtyard and renovated apartment block is ultimately about the daily lives of residents, not about abstract climate targets. As Europe races towards 2030 climate neutrality goals, and cities are growing exponentially, one lesson from the Pilot Cities Programme is becoming clear. The cities that move fastest tend to be those that treat citizens as partners in the transition, rather than relying only on big budgets or smart technology.  Across the first cohort of 52 Pilot Cities, more than 184,000 people took part in activities that ranged from citizen assemblies and neighbourhood workshops to digital apps [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz Lappeenranta is raising the bar for how a European city can shape its heating future. In a moment when many cities are struggling to cut emissions from buildings, this lakeside community in Southeast Finland is piloting a digital approach that uses real-time data, building sensors and electricity market forecasting to reduce energy use and shrink fossil fuel demand during peak hours.  The work is part of the Pilot Cities Programme, and it offers a concrete example of how technology and local collaboration can reshape district heating and support broader climate neutrality goals. What is happening [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz Across Europe, a quiet shift has been taking place. In 52 cities, local governments, residents, community groups and businesses spent two years testing new ways to cut emissions and new financing models and how to turn abstract climate ambition into a lived, local systemic transformation. Now, their achievements show what reaching climate neutrality can mean in practice.  Their collective effort has produced tangible results. More than 184,000 citizens took part in pilot activities. Cities trained over 1,400 public officers, created 256 new jobs, launched 40 follow-up projects and recorded an estimated reduction [...]