The 25 NEUTRALPATH partners will work to design positive and clean energy districts (PCEDs) within the five cities and implement the defined measures in the two lighthouse cities. They will also work together to improve governance processes and ensure scalability and replicability.
Project
NEUTRALPATH is a European project funded under the European Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission.
Objectives
NEUTRALPATH aims to support cities in their transition to climate neutrality by designing a collaborative plan for a more sustainable future for all. To this end, the project will:
- Design two PCEDs in the lighthouse cities to demonstrate that they are valid solutions to reach climate neutrality.
- Set up five CN-Labs in the lighthouse and fellow cities that will act as innovation hubs to coordinate and facilitate co-creation processes.
- Establish innovative governance strategies to enable the transformation of cities towards climate neutrality.
- Define metrics for the evaluation of PCED, the annual energy and CO2 balance.
- Promote upscaling and replication through PCEDs.
- Promote city networks to build on existing knowledge, technology and funding, and in turn provide a factual contribution toward the climate targets.
The project will achieve positive results by involving several stakeholders:
Residents will be involved in co-design activities.
Public authorities and policy makers will contribute to policy development and implementation.
Industry and technology providers will integrate expertise in the development of new systems, tools, and services.
Investors and financial players will demonstrate benefits and returns on investment from PCEDs.
Scientific community will enable further exploitation in future R&I initiatives and launch new research lines.
Positive and clean energy districts
Positive and clean energy districts (PCEDs) are crucial elements of the urban transformation process towards climate neutrality and must be at the core of cities’ decarbonisation plans.
In the role of lighthouse cities, Dresden and Zaragoza will demonstrate two PCEDs through the design, implementation and evaluation phases. To this end, both will establish CN-Labs to design participative and human-centred solutions and promote faster dissemination and replicability at the EU level.
In addition, through their respective CN-Labs, three fellow cities (Istanbul, Ghent, and Vantaa) will become direct participants in the processes and later actors in the design of their own PCED.
Cluster
Initiatives
Networking is crucial to our progress toward climate neutrality.
NEUTRALPATH is part of the EU climate-neutral and smart cities mission. It is actively engaged with several networking initiatives aimed at strengthening collaboration with other projects and cities. The aim is to contribute to a cohesive and synergistic approach to achieve shared objectives within the broader European network ecosystem.
