A new peer-reviewed article published in Open Research Europe brings together nine EU-funded Positive Energy District (PED) projects, including NEUTRALPATH, to compare how they engage citizens in planning, designing and implementing climate-neutral districts across Europe.
The paper, “Citizen-centric pathways to Positive Energy Districts: Lessons from European PED projects“, was published on 6 July 2026 and is freely available on Zenodo.
The article grew out of a dedicated workshop held at the Sustainable Places 2025 Conference in September 2025, where NEUTRALPATH was presented alongside InterPED, TIPS4PED, ARV, COMMUNITAS, PEDvolution, Citizen-led Renovation, ASCEND and LEGOFIT. Each project submitted a structured contribution covering its objectives, engagement rationale, participatory tools and lessons learned, which the authors then synthesised into a cross-project analysis built around five recurring themes: partnership-based engagement models, digital tools and platforms for co-creation, energy communities as governance frameworks, participatory monitoring and living-lab methodologies, and gamification and facilitation.
NEUTRALPATH’s contribution, “Co-creation for PCEDs through climate-neutral labs“, centres on the project’s Climate-Neutral Labs (CN-Labs), established in its five pilot cities: Dresden, Zaragoza, Istanbul, Vantaa and Ghent. The paper describes the CN-Labs as place-based innovation ecosystems that combine three functions: community engagement hubs, through Open Days, world cafés and thematic workshops; user-centred design engines, co-designing Positive Clean Energy District (PCED) scenarios and governance options with dedicated attention to vulnerable groups; and social acceptance observatories, using recurring surveys to track how perceptions evolve across project phases. The authors also highlight NEUTRALPATH’s participatory toolkit, including the Energize board game and interactive digital totems with 3D PCED visualisations, and cite early results from Zaragoza, where an Open Day attended by around 150 participants showed how iterative lab engagement helps residents move from viewing PCEDs as city-led projects to seeing them as shared neighbourhood endeavours.
In the paper’s discussion, NEUTRALPATH’s place-based labs are cited alongside InterPED, Citizen-led Renovation, PEDvolution and ARV as examples of how projects are turning partnership-based engagement from principle into practice. The authors conclude that, across all nine projects, the energy transition emerges as a societal challenge as much as a technical one, and that inclusivity, adaptive engagement frameworks, energy literacy and long-term governance are what will ultimately make PEDs equitable, resilient and scalable across Europe.
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