Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz Europe’s climate transition is unfolding in places most people know intimately: the apartment blocks where families start their mornings, the schools and offices that shape daily routines, the streets where old buildings tell the story of generations. These spaces also represent one of Europe’s biggest climate challenges.   Buildings account for around 40% of the EU’s energy consumption and more than a third of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, making the built environment one of the most important frontiers in the race towards climate neutrality.  For cities working towards the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, [...]

Author: Joanna Trimble In Denmark, Sønderborg is set to achieve a carbon-neutral energy system by 2029 – positioning the city as a green frontrunner in Europe. Its business-first mindset powers that success. Working alongside ten industries with the highest energy consumption, the municipality creates viable business cases, setting in motion the economic tipping points that propel the climate transition.  A small city with a grand vision   Nestled on the southern coast of Denmark, Sønderborg is a small waterfront city where history, innovation, and maritime culture converge. Despite a modest population of 74,000, its influence far exceeds its size. The city can punch above its weight thanks [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz A decade ago, the energy transition seemed relatively straightforward. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, improve efficiency and emissions would fall. Cities now know it is far more complicated than that.  As climate neutrality moves from ambition to implementation, local governments are discovering that progress depends on far more than technology. Success increasingly hinges on institutions, investment, public participation and the ability to align diverse stakeholders around a shared vision. Producing clean energy remains essential, but cities are also learning how to integrate it into the fabric of urban life through governance, finance and collective action.  That lesson is emerging [...]

Author: Joanna Trimble Slovakia’s Košice – a European Capital of Culture – is an old city with fresh ambitions. Stirred to refashion energy governance, the city set out to establish dedicated energy teams, renovate municipal buildings, and tackle energy poverty – where heating, electricity, and hot water consume a large share of already stretched incomes. With some residents facing impossible trade-offs between energy, food, and rent, city leaders turned to local partners who broke new ground for Slovakia to tailor assistance to people’s needs.  “How much energy does the washing machine or the oven use?” asks Petra, a single mother of two living in Košice. Every day, energy bills are weighed against other needs, like paying rent and food for her family. “In the winter, we all sleep in one room under blankets, so I don't have to heat the whole apartment.”    Petra [...]

Author: Joanna Trimble Every sector faces the pressing need to outpace climate impacts for economic and environmental security. In France, Bordeaux Métropole teamed up with Bordeaux University to turn this challenge into an opportunity. By forging alliances across business, government, research, and civil society, they hope to build a foundation capable of catching cascading climate risks in their tracks.   “Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum.”   With this message at the World Economic Forum, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney urged that decades of prioritising efficiency over resilience [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz Across the continent, cities know their climate plans far outstrip their budgets. Facilitated by NetZeroCities, many participating cities acknowledge that municipal coffers can typically cover only a fraction of what is needed to deliver climate neutrality, often closer to a fifth than to half once the full cost of transforming buildings, transport and energy systems is on the table.  That gap will not close through grants and city budgets alone. Cities understand that this demands new financial mechanisms and coalitions between public authorities, private investors, citizens and European institutions, and that is exactly what is starting to take shape. In the past two [...]

Author: Joanna Trimble The Swedish city of Lund is testing how high a city can soar by rethinking how it governs the climate transition. By pulling dozens of initiatives into a single portfolio, the city is charting a common path to accelerate the pace of change. Now, this city is set to forge an innovative and adaptive model for governance, pushing the boundaries on what people can achieve together and how to activate collective impact for the long term. Lund has made great strides towards decarbonisation, with emissions falling 45% compared to 2010. But the city needs to reach [...]

Author: Joanna Trimble Porto’s ambitious pledge to reach climate neutrality by 2030 is on the cusp of a citywide effort: one that embraces its people power, the ancient city’s spirit of innovation and its tradition of reimagining itself for two thousand years of continuous urban life.   “Porto is a city where the past gives depth to the present, and where innovation is not a break with history, but a continuation of a long-standing ability to adapt, reinvent, and move forward,” says Catarina Araújo, Vice Mayor and City Councillor for Porto’s Urban Planning, Public Space, Environment and [...]

Author: Barbara Jarkiewicz In Europe, the green transition is often illustrated by solar panels on roofs, wind turbines on the horizon and cyclists on busy streets. Yet a huge share of urban energy still disappears into something far less visible: the heat that keeps homes, schools and offices warm. How and when that heat is produced, distributed and used can determine whether a city meets its climate targets.  Copenhagen has already taken significant strides on the visible aspects of its green transition. Wind turbines on the horizon, cyclists in every lane, district heating in most homes. With its Flexumers4Future project under the NetZeroCities Pilot Cities Programme, the city is now turning to [...]

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 [...]