The CATALYSE project envisions fostering climate-neutral cities by advancing beyond fragmented experimentation towards mission-oriented policies that are deeply embedded in local contexts. Its core vision is to empower Knowledge Institutions (KI) as transformative hubs within mission-oriented innovation ecosystems. By strengthening the roles of KIs as trusted actors, CATALYSE aims to connect diverse stakeholders, scale social innovations, and enhance collaboration across Europe. The project seeks to create inclusive problem-solution spaces in 4 pilot cities (Leipzig, Manchester, Rotterdam and Vienna) that bridge local needs with global challenges, driving sustainable, socially innovative, and democratically legitimized transitions toward net-zero cities. Through this vision, CATALYSE addresses critical challenges in translating EU Cities Mission goals into localized actions, ensuring that cities can successfully navigate and lead their climate-neutral transformations.

European Cultural Heritage (CH) is a crucial resource that must be maintained, preserved and accessible, to counteract degradation enhanced by unfavorable environmental conditions and climate changes. Conservation methodologies lack durability, sustainability and cost-effectiveness, and are typically based on energy-consuming processes or non-environmentally friendly materials. Coping with these issues, GREENART proposes new solutions based on green and sustainable materials and methods, to preserve, conserve and restore CH: 1) Protective coatings based on green materials from waste and plant proteins, with self-healing and reversibility character, possibly functionalized with organic/inorganic nanoparticles to impart VOC capture, anti-corrosion and barrier behaviors. 2) Foams and packaging materials made by biodegradable/compostable polymers from renewable sources (polyurethanes and natural fibers) to control T/RH. 3) Consolidants based on natural polymers from renewable sources, to mechanically strengthen weak artifacts. 4) Gels and cleaning fluids inspired by the most advanced systems currently available to conservators, improving them according to green and circular economy. 5) Green tech solutions for monitoring CH assets non-invasively against pollutants and environmental oscillations. Life cycle Assessment and modeling will favor the “safe-by-design” creation of affordable solutions safe to craftspeople, operators and the environment, and minimize energy-consumption in monitoring museum environments. Such holistic approach is granted in GREENART by a multidisciplinary partnership that gathers hard and soft sciences and engineering, including academic centers, innovative industries and SMEs, conservation institutions and professionals, museums whose collections hold absolute masterpieces in need of conservation, public entities and policy makers. The latter will favour training and dissemination activities to make stakeholders familiar with the new methods.

The Triangulum project will demonstrate how a systems innovation approach based around the European Commission’s SCC Strategic Implementation Plan can drive dynamic smart city development. We will test the SIP across three lighthouse cities: Manchester, Eindhoven and Stavanger, which represent the main typologies of European cities. They will be complemented by our follower cities Prague, Leipzig and Sabadell. This powerful combination reflects an urban population of between 100k and 1,2m inhabitants across six different countries, allowing us to demonstrate successful replication across a wide range of typical urban areas in Europe. Each city has already made significant progress towards the transition of becoming a smart city; developing their own individual approach reflecting specific local circumstances. These inherent strengths will now serve to accelerate the smart city development across proposed demonstration sites within Triangulum. The suite of projects developed will be based around zero/low energy districts, integrated infrastructures and sustainable urban mobility designed to deliver a range of cross-cutting outcomes across different sectors and stakeholders. This will provide the basis to ‘road test’ the SIP and provide recommendations to the Commission on how it could be improved to facilitate wider replication. The Triangulum goals target a series of direct impacts around; reduced energy consumption of buildings, increased use of renewable energies, increased utilisation of electric vehicles, deployment of intelligent energy management technologies and the deployment of an adaptive and dynamic ICT data hub. The design and implementation of innovative Business Models and the activation of citizens as co-creators are core cross-cutting elements to base the technologies in real-world city environments and facilitate replication.

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.