The Climate City Contract (CCC) is a governance innovation tool to help cities collaboratively address their barriers to accelerate transformative action and reach climate neutrality by 2030.

The CCC is a collaborative and iterative learning process led by cities and involving multiple stakeholders at various governance levels. The CCC holds great value in gathering all actors to explore the most effective pathways to climate neutrality by 2030, and in joining forces on a common agenda to get there.

To explore Climate City Contracts developed by Mission Cities, please click the button below:

A ROADMAP TO ACCELERATE CITIES’ JOURNEY TOWARDS CLIMATE NEUTRALITY

The Climate City Contract is used as a roadmap to guide cities actions and investments, to continuously evaluate their strengths and gaps and to explore innovative solutions to reach climate objectives while leaving no one behind.

The Climate City Contract is both a process and a living document with three interlinked components: Commitments, Actions, and Investments.

Three parts, one living document

The 2030 Climate Neutrality Commitments, central component of the Climate City Contract, captures the outcomes of a co-creation process with local, regional, and national stakeholders to establish new ways of working together to achieve climate neutrality faster. It is where cities articulate their 2030 ambition, a strategy to achieve it, as well as the specific commitments from stakeholders in the contract.

The 2030 Climate Neutrality Action Plan identifies the strengths and gaps of existing strategies, policies, and plans, and uses all levers of change to create a coordinated portfolio of interventions to achieve the 2030 ambition. This component of the Climate City Contract serves as an instrument to operationalise the cities climate neutrality ambition.

The 2030 Climate Neutrality Investment Plan develops a long-term economic and financial strategy aimed at achieving climate neutrality by 2030. It strategically mobilises and organises public resources and addresses how to attract private capital to fund and finance cities pathways to climate neutrality.

Conceptualisation of the EU Cities Mission Climate City Contract

The three interlinked components of the Climate City Contract cover the following aspects:

Commitments

  • Vision and strategy​
  • Municipal Commitment​
  • Signatories
  • Endorsers​
  • Concrete commitments​
  • Signature/s

Action Plan

  • Agreed baseline ​
  • 2030 Gap Analysis ​
  • Impact pathway(s) ​
  • Systemic solutions​
  • Portfolio approach​
  • Timeline, KPIs, responsibilities​

Investment Plan

  • Capital needs assessment​
  • Enabling actions​
  • Capital deployment approach
  • Portfolio implementation
  • Portfolio scaling​
  • Milestones, Impact Framework

THE CLIMATE CITY CONTRACT PROCESS

The Climate Transition Map – A NetZeroCities tool to accelerate the journey towards climate-neutrality

NetZeroCities Climate Transition Map

The Climate City Contract process should be guided by the Climate Transition Map. This interactive tool allows users to dig deeper into the different phases of the climate neutrality journey and navigate to resources in order to take action on the different phases.

The timeline and starting point of this journey is different for each city depending on their constraints and goals, past efforts and local dynamics. NetZeroCities and the City Advisors accompany cities to understand where they may be in the journey – in the map – and where they need to go next. But ultimately, each city’s team is the lead explorer on this journey.​​​

The journey should focus on building ​7 core elements for the transition: a strong mandate, a good understanding of the system, a strong local ecosystem, a coherent portfolio, transformative action, learning and reflection, normalised ‘net zero’ practice.

A strong mandate for accelerated climate action ensures alignment of all actors around the actions and investments needed to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. It protects the city’s dedication to change, even when elected administrations change.

Understanding the challenge at hand from multiple perspectives and learning from past actions has real potential to accelerate the impact of climate efforts. The issues cities face in mitigating and adapting to climate change are not straightforward, so uncovering the barriers that block necessary changes is crucial to enable transformation.

Achieving the Mission’s 2030 climate neutrality target, as well as generating important environmental, economic and social co-benefits, can only be achieved through coherent interventions using multiple levers of change. Isolated solutions and multiple but uncoordinated roadmaps do not trigger the type of transformation reaching climate-neutrality requires.

Implementing a portfolio of transformative actions for the transition towards climate neutrality is not a linear path. Practical application can be confronted with many operational or financial uncertainties. These difficulties are eased when a city experiments with new collaborative ways of working.

Collective learning builds the shared knowledge and capabilities necessary to catalyse change at speed. In the current context, the way forward is not always clear and many of the steps towards climate-neutrality are yet to be discovered. It is thus critical to recognise and resource learning, reflexive practice and adaptive management, both within the municipality and between diverse actors.

To accelerate the transition to climate neutrality, cities need to embed new good practices that speed up inclusive decision making, improved multi-actor collaboration and enabled effective implementation. This can include anything from new budgeting and procurement practices to new ways of combining solutions or forming diverse, effective teams.

A climate transition demands more than what a city government alone can provide. It requires the positive commitment, passion, creativity, and drive of all local stakeholders. It requires everybody’s diverse experience and expertise, resources and investments.

MISSION CITIES’ CLIMATE CITY CONTRACT PROCESS

All Mission Cities have made significant progress on their Climate City Contracts (CCCs), tailoring their strategies to fit local needs and priorities. Most Mission Cities have already submitted their CCCs, and the remaining Mission Cities are expected to submit them in the coming months.

Once a CCC is submitted, it undergoes a completeness and coherence check review by NetZeroCities experts before being sent to the European Commission. The Commission then assesses the quality of each CCC and may award the EU Mission Label, in recognition of the cities’ ambitious plans to reach climate neutrality by 2030. This label aims to unlock investment, particularly from the private sector, to help accelerate their journey towards a fair green and digital transition.

To date, 33 cities have received the EU Mission Label (ten in October 2023 and 23 in March 2024) and recent CCC submissions from spring 2024 are currently under review by the European Commission.

Access CCC Highlights:

More information