Sustainable energy Positive & zero cARbon CommunitieS demonstrates and validates technically and socio-economically viable and replicable, innovative solutions for rolling out smart, integrated positive energy systems for the transition to a citizen centred zero carbon & resource efficient economy. SPARCS facilitates the participation of buildings to the energy market enabling new services and a virtual power plant concept, creating VirtualPositiveEnergy communities as energy democratic playground (positive energy districts can exchange energy with energy entities located outside the district). Seven cities will demonstrate 100+ actions turning buildings, blocks, and districts into energy prosumers. Impacts span economic growth, improved quality of life, and environmental benefits towards the EC policy framework for climate and energy, the SET plan and UN Sustainable Development goals. SPARCS co-creation brings together citizens, companies, research organizations, city planning and decision-making entities, transforming cities to carbon-free inclusive communities. Lighthouse cities Espoo (FI) and Leipzig (DE) implement large demonstrations. Fellow cities Reykjavik (IS), Maia (PT), Lviv (UA), Kifissia (EL) and Kladno (CZ) prepare replication with hands-on feasibility studies. SPARCs identifies bankable actions to accelerate market uptake, pioneers innovative, exploitable governance and business models boosting the transformation processes, joint procurement procedures and citizen engaging mechanisms in an overarching city planning instrument toward the bold City Vision 2050. SPARCS engages 30 partners from 8 EU Member States (FI, DE, PT, CY, EL, BE, CZ, IT) and 2 non-EU countries (UA, IS), representing key stakeholders within the value chain of urban challenges and smart, sustainable cities bringing together three distinct but also overlapping knowledge areas: (i) City Energy Systems, (ii) ICT and Interoperability, (iii) Business Innovation and Market Knowledge.

DISTENDER will provide integrated strategies by building a methodological framework that guide the integration of climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation strategies through participatory approaches in ways that respond to the impacts and risks of climate change (CC), supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis that facilitates the understanding of interactions, synergies and trade-offs. Holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation must be tailored to the context-specific situation and this requires a flexible and participatory planning process to ensure legitimate and salient action, carried out by all important stakeholders. DISTENDER will develop a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative socio-economic-climate scenarios through a facilitated participatory process that integrates bottom-up knowledge and locally-relevant drivers with top-down information from the global European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and downscaled Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC. A cross-sectorial and multi-scale impact assessment modelling toolkit will be developed to analyse the complex interactions over multiple sectors, including an economic evaluation framework. The economic impact of the different efforts will be analyse, including damage claim settlement and how do sectoral activity patterns change under various scenarios considering indirect and cascading effects. It is an innovative project combining three key concepts: cross-scale, integration/harmonization and robustness checking. DISTENDER will follow a pragmatic approach applying methodologies and toolkits across a range of European case studies (six core case studies and five followers) that reflect a cross-section of the challenges posed by CC adaptation and mitigation. The knowledge generated by DISTENDER will be offered by a Decision Support System (DSS) which will include guidelines, manuals, easy-to-use tools and experiences from the application of the cases studies.

U_CAN facilitates a practical bottom-up approach with Ukrainian cities towards climate neutrality. Following the European standards and the European Green Deal (EGD), the project starts with a core group of 8 Ukrainian cities, Dresden as a Mission City, NGOs and research institutions. This networking and co-creation process addresses the current challenges of the Ukrainian cities and their key sectors. Within 48 months, the CNSC-UA twinning partners exchange experiences with further network municipalities throughout the country, adapting to European climate standards with experts like DIN and transitioning together. The core stakeholders work closely with their city administration in building capacities in the key sectors identified. In light of the war, co-creation and Citizen Science augmented training activities ensure an effective, value-based and needs-oriented approach. Communication and dissemination by EU partners near the UA borders enable – besides an online platform – the personal exchange of experiences with the CNSC twin cities. This step-by-step synergy building and facilitation includes vision workshops, road mapping and stakeholder co-creation to twin European and Ukrainian cities. This leads to use case development in each pilot city supporting pilot implementation of measures for climate mitigation and adaptation. This is combined with an extensive plan for dissemination, exploitation and communication led by European and Ukrainian umbrella organisations, standardisation initiatives, and local and national representatives. These efforts are assisted through functioning and already working city partnerships, seamlessly integrating the Ukrainian Cities into the vision of the EGD. The given diversity in geopolitical characteristics ensures the involvement of all relevant sectors and the equal distribution of support, ranging from smaller cities to the Ukrainian capital and most important lighthouse City Kyiv.