Who should contribute to the climate transition? Who is, and who can be included? Local examples from Sweden, Netherlands & Spain connected to a just energy transition, with a multi-level governance perspective (local, regional, national, EU, global), in the EU Mission “100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030”. Examples from three current NetZeroCities Pilots, justice as a pre-condition for energy transition in Sweden, large-scale refurbishment in Spain, and local Smart Energy Grid in Netherlands.

Digital Twins are critical tools to run simulations for energy, water, pollution and all other environmental city challenges. They allow us to identify the most critical infrastructure at risk (resiliency) and evaluate the best solution alternatives for any environmental challenge. The latest AI algorithms are leading to incredible solutions and enormous value for city managers on this topic. Join us to learn from examples in Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Gothenburg, and to discuss how your city could benefit.

Many cities around the world have been piloting with mobilityhubs through the last years. Now it’s time to have them growing into adulthood. What will be the challenges? Who will be the (problem) owner of the hubs and above all, what will be the financial model? These topics and more will be discussed in the Amsterdam workshop on mobility hubs. Amsterdam cannot do this alone of course, therefore we are collaborating with frontrunners like Helsinki.

Please join Helsingborg City and Bankers without Boundaries as we look at the Net Zero Cities Mission.  The session will focus on how Helsingborg have developed their Action Plan and Investment Plan to ensure the City is making rapid progress to be Net Zero.   We will then discuss the 'what next' with an introduction to the Capital Hub.  We will look at different stakeholders, instruments and project preparation facilities and how these will all work together to move the plan into a reality.     The session will be interactive and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on how we can evolve to ensure clear progress to getting projects operational and having maximum impact .  

A city’s journey to a fossil free heating and cooling system - and what the future holds. We share Lund’s 60-year collaborative journey to a city-wide fossil free heating and cooling system, with innovative solutions like the largest low temperature heating network in the world, systems for sharing energy between buildings, a digital platform for trading and managing energy and more. We discuss challenges for heating and cooling systems in cities and industry internationally, and look for future collaboration opportunities. We discuss the geothermal developments in The Hague, and we give a preview of the System Transition Demonstrator taking shape in Lund’s Innovation District.

Cities can act as climate solvers if they manage to tackle the huge city challenge of managing optimal usage of their finite and costly space and room for resources. The density of people in the cities are both an opportunity and a huge challenge.   The opportunity lies within the possibility for the many to share climate-effective services – maybe one of the best and most effective climate strategies. The challenge for the city to unlock this potential is the complexity – so many services and features for the many in the same finite space.  We would like to inspire for an open discussion in connection to city management in areas such as energy, city logistics and waste management by sharing some insights and examples on how to move forward with the help of digital twins, IoT and related technologies.

Cities must be better at working with green and digital transition in parallel! This session is led by Sweden’s Innovation Agency Vinnova, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, and key municipalities working on twinning the green and digital transition. We will address challenges and best practices for digitalisation as a key enabler for cities' green transition. Concrete examples will be shared on different levels; Swedish municipalities’ experiences from working with digital solutions to tackle specific climate challenges on local level, as well as experiences from national and international levels (such as the establishment of dataspaces). Specific initiatives to strengthen national support functions will be discussed, in an interactive workshop that brings climate strategist and digital strategists together. The ambitions are to inspire all types of stakeholders to work towards the common goal of a twin transition, to build knowledge of the mutual capabilities required among both cities and commercial actors, and to identify future joint activities on European and national levels.

The climate neutrality journey requires managing massive amounts of information, coordinating teams, applying regulations and communicating with civil servants, citizens and other stakeholders. All processes involving understanding, processing, and analyzing data and communication are drastically improved by the use of the latest generative artificial intelligence. In this session, we will explore how these advanced tools can improve internal productivity, understanding of your community, and communication with citizens.

Cities are working towards a sustainable and efficient urban logistics system. But there are challenges along the way. How can technology help, like smart access and dynamic loading zones, visibility of flows? Does modal shift help, like transport by water and cargobikes? And what kind of policies are possible, such as zero emission zones and promotion of urban logistics hubs. And how do we get the (transport) industry to collaborate and take ownership of the transition? Join these two cities, that actively work on this transition, and discuss challenges and opportunities on the road to a decarbonized and space-efficient urban logistics system.

This workshop will focus on the state of European smart cities business models and financing schemes and challenges ahead when it comes to scale solutions and accelerate their deployment. From a set of use cases we go deeper in to various pathways to scale up. With a financial model framework we will emphasize the role that investors and cities can play and how the dialogue can be conducted.

The workshop will focus on state of the art in energy efficiency and renewable energy production in buildings, and next steps to accelerate the energy transition until 2030. The discussions will be about challenges with: 1) Renewable energy and storage 2) Balance between energy efficiency measures in renovations and new buildings and consumption-based CO2 emissions 3) Energy Community and Microgrids  4) Positive Energy Districts  5) AI and Digital Twin as a tool to reduce energy use.