Welcome to the Smart Cities Marketplace newsletter! The Smart Cities Marketplace aims to give many climate-neutral and smart city initiatives a voice and a platform. In that spirit, we have agreed to offer like-minded EC initiatives the opportunity to contribute directly to our newsletter by drafting a guest editorial. This contribution is from NetZeroCities.
The European Commission launched the Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities (Cities Mission) in September 2021, which aims to accelerate 100 European cities' transition towards climate neutrality by 2030. NetZeroCities manages the Cities Mission Platform and supports the 112 Mission Cities on their decarbonisation journey.
While helping Mission Cities to drastically and systemically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, NetZeroCities also shares resources with all cities committed to accelerating the transition to climate neutrality and supports the sharing of experiences and learnings deriving from the Mission Cities to all interested cities. The NetZeroCities Portal is the online component of the Cities Mission Platform. It brings all of the latest on urban climate neutrality under one roof. This space enables all cities committed to reaching climate neutrality to connect with each other and to access online solutions as they work to reduce their emissions. Get started setting up your user profile and start exploring! The Portal is first and foremost a collaboration space where every city, regardless of where it finds itself in its journey to climate neutrality, can share experiences and build relationships with other cities to learn together.
In early March 2023, NetZeroCities also announced the start of its Pilot Cities Programme to support European cities to test and implement innovative approaches to rapid decarbonisation. A first cohort of 53 cities are now embarking upon unprecedented climate action. They will implement systemic and locally designed innovative actions that span multiple areas, from buildings to waste, and levers of change, including governance, finance and policy, addressing all urban systems contributing to climate-neutrality. In May, NetZeroCities will be opening a call for Twin Cities to transfer knowledge and build capacities across Pilot and Twin Cities engaged in the programme. Each Pilot City will be paired with two or three Twins that share a similar background and might face similar challenges.
Collaboration with the Smart Cities Marketplace will be essential to helping cities and we encourage you to engage with us. We seek to build cities' capabilities to better shape markets for replication and scaling, and to develop policies and projects for deeper impacts. Success on our part will mean increased activities by cities to engage the marketplace. You can help by joining in our efforts through a community of practice to complement market activity through mutual support and general advocacy from you to help cities take the needed actions and better work with their national governments on key policy and capital needs.
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