NetZeroCities Enabling City Transformation Programme Call

Deadline: 14-Oct-24

The European Commission (EC) has launched an open call for the NetZeroCities Enabling City Transformation Programme.

Unlike the Pilot Cities Programme, which aimed at identifying and overcoming barriers to climate action in cities, the Enabling City Transformation (ECT) programme is aimed at exploring and implementing enabling innovations for whole-city transformation, and that lead to practical, replicable learning at scale, and that can support many other European cities. Cities and city groups should therefore focus their proposals on building enabling factors and conditions for transformation in ways that other cities can practically use, and that will be replicable across the Mission.

The Enabling City Transformation portfolio will receive funding to support the implementation of interventions that put effort into collaboratively tackling collective challenges in the implementation of Mission-aligned initiatives, with a European level and dimension for impact.

With the programming of this new portfolio, the SGA-NZC Consortium will also aim to build upon the existing portfolio of Pilot Cities, and maximise learning, replication, and scaling opportunities.

NetZeroCities manages the EU Cities Mission Platform and supports the 112 Mission cities in drastically reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to achieve climate neutrality by 2030; it extends support to all cities in Europe committed to achieving climate neutrality, in particular through its online NetZeroCities Portal accessible to all cities.

NetZeroCities aims to enable European cities and citizens to show the way forward towards an inclusive, thriving, climate resilient and sustainable future. It tailors advanced capabilities related to systemic change, citizen engagement and democratic, participatory governance, capital and financial structuring, and social innovation, to ensure cities have access to expertise needed to address their challenges in becoming climate neutral.

Enabling City Transformation: Expected Results, Learning Approach and Programme Support

• The Enabling City Transformation programme builds upon and progresses beyond the Pilot Cities Programme by inviting Mission Cities to propose innovation actions to overcome systemic implementation challenges, the results/outcomes of which will support them (and other European cities) to shift from testing and experimentation (Pilot Cities) to enabling whole-city implementation, i.e. implementation at scale towards Mission goals, before stepping into catalysing and embedding the transformational change required for sustaining city climate neutrality, further down the line. As such, applicant Mission Cities should be thinking about enabling conditions within and beyond their own context, targeting shared challenges and opportunities for impact.
• Programmatically, the results of the Enabling City Transformation portfolio will be:
  • innovative and/or enabling solutions or groups of solutions tested and implemented at city level over the duration of the Programme,
  • explicit lessons learnt from the innovative trajectories, with knowledge, capacity and capabilities developed at city level; and
  • clear learning and outcomes of enabling approaches/measures to support the implementation of innovative solutions, at scale, by the end of the Programme, which could include a new business model, policy initiative, governance innovation, funding or financing model, and EU-level replication or scaling strategy.

Scope of Interventions

Interventions should consist of the following activities to be eligible for funding:

• Pioneering activities to support climate-neutrality, including the deployment of innovative (new or improved) technology, product, process, service, solution, policy, or governance model at city level, explored in a cross-sectoral and systemic manner.
• Systemic, science-based innovative initiatives that strengthen cities’ use of scientific research and ensure translation of research results into policy actions, to accelerate climate neutrality in the sectors/domains of water, food, energy, industry, housing and deep building retrofitting, transport, and mobility through the levers of green technology (i.e., digitalisation), behavioural/lifestyle change, social innovation, culture, policy and regulation, finance, and new business models (e.g., circular economy).
• Activities to support climate-neutrality to establish new knowledge and build capacity and capabilities of city government and associated local actors through training, workshops, and other forms of learning.
• Activities aiming to build more collaborative communities, to advance new governance models at city level, and to engage citizens (including vulnerable/marginalised groups) and enable them to act on climate change in a systemic and cross-sectoral manner.

Funding

• The total available budget under this call is 22.8 million Euros (EUR). Funding rules defining the budget allocation to any one proposal – and subsequently selected intervention – follows a logic linked to the number of Mission Cities included in any one proposal:
  • 500,000 – 600,000 EUR: proposals with a minimum of one Mission City plus at least one additional consortium partner (NB: the additional consortium partner may be another eligible Mission city/district).
  • 1,000,000 EUR: proposals with a minimum of two distinct Mission Cities (i.e. formally selected as such), plus any additional consortium partners.
  • 1,500,000 EUR: proposals with a minimum of three distinct Mission Cities (i.e. formally selected as such), plus any additional consortium partners.

Aims, Outcomes and Impact

• The aim of the selected portfolio of implementation-enabling innovations is to support cities in taking next steps in their pathways to accelerated change towards 2030 climate neutrality goals, and build upon their and other’s work in the Pilot Cities Programme to date. It aims to do so by supporting combinations of interventions that explore and experiment with key enabling innovations/enabling conditions to achieving Mission goals, as revealed in Mission activities such as the Climate City Contract process, Pilot Cities Programme, and other Mission work — relevant to a city’s key emission domains — and by generating accelerated learning that can inform subsequent transfer, replication, and scaling efforts in all other EU cities.
• The Enabling City Transformation programme will support interventions in cities aiming at holistically enabling the deployment and scaling of solutions, building on insights gained from Mission activities so far and exploiting R&I outcomes, and combining multiple levers of change to underpin the climate transition: social, cultural, technological, nature-based, regulatory, and financial innovation, and new business and governance models.
• Through the combination of interventions supported in this programme, cities will collectively aim to achieve breakthroughs in enabling whole-city innovation and subsequent implementation at scale (direct Outcomes), that will ultimately lead to the reduction of GHG emissions and maximising Co-benefits, by unlocking the deployment of solutions at whole city level (long-term targeted impacts).

Who can apply? 

• Only local authorities or city administrations selected to be part of EU Mission for climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 (Mission Cities) are eligible to apply to and receive funding under this Call. For the avoidance of doubt, this call is addressed to designated Mission cities only and therefore these consortia may not include other city, district, or municipal authorities (i.e., ‘non-Mission’).

For more information, visit European Commission.