Specific Grant Agreement to the FPA to reinforce the operations of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform

Within the Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) awarded under topic HORIZON-MISS-2021-CIT-02-03: Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform, the selected consortia will be invited to submit a proposal for a Research and Innovation Action that will contribute to the implementation of the last three years of the action plan defined in the above FPA.

Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• reinforcing services aimed at supporting the implementation of the Climate City Contracts (CCCs) of the cities selected to participate in the Mission through the Call for Expression of Interest;
• provision of basic services targeted at cities falling under the second objective of the Mission as well as cities that applied to the Call for Expression of Interest, committed to the climate-neutrality target by 2030 but were not eventually selected in the final list;
• Building on the good practices developed in the previous SGAs to support cities in the implementation of their investment plans through tailored advice and assistance offered by the Climate City Capital Hub and the City Finance Specialists. This activity will reinforce synergies between the Adaptation and Cities Missions, supporting cities in finding financing solutions for both mitigation as well as adaptation projects[[ For this purpose, the Adaptation Mission is financially contributing to the Climate City Capital Hub.]];
• Assistance to cities with innovative and strategic procurement, including joint procurement with other cities, bridging with EU mechanisms and collaborating with national platforms on procurement, for example through regulatory sandboxes;
• Support for cities in monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the CCC;
• Expand and regularly update the open-source services of the online platform, accessible to all cities;
• Carry out a capacity building and mutual learning programme, supporting cities’ move towards climate neutrality;
• Foster mutual learning and exchange of good practice through for instance mentoring and twinning actions;
• Demonstrators accelerating and sustaining city climate-neutrality solutions, building on the experience of activity 4 under the Specific Grant Agreements to the FPA for the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform in the Work Programme 2021-2022. This support will enable Mission Cities to catalyse and sustain innovation and accelerate systemic change towards the objectives articulated in their CCC. In particular, it will support Mission Cities to anchor the resulting paradigm shift and embed transformative change over time towards the new normal of carbon neutrality.
  • Launch and manage calls for proposals to support pilots for the deployment in participating Mission cities;
  • Establish cooperation and regular exchange with the R&I projects that are and will be funded under the Climate-neutral and smart cities Mission Work Programme in order to identify complementarities, avoid potential overlaps with the pilots supported by the Mission Platform and ensure synergies where relevant, to the benefit of the participating cities. This collaboration should be formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding with the relevant projects and initiatives.

Expected Impact: Proposals should set out a credible pathway to contributing to:

• Supporting the implementation of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission.
• Accelerating the transition towards climate-neutral cities.

Scope: This action aims at ensuring the Mission Platform's continued full operational capacity addressing and developing the actions needed to implement the relevant building blocks of the Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform while taking into account the lessons learned and the new priorities that emerged from the first few years of its implementation.

The Mission Platform will assist the cities that were selected[[ https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_2591]] as a result of the open Call for Expression of Interest which was launched in November 2021 and resulted in 377 expressions of interest from cities in all 27 EU Member States and from 9 associated countries. These cities respond to the first objective of the Mission to deliver at least 100 climate-neutral and smart European cities by 2030. Cities that are not yet able to commit to the Mission’s timeline but are willing to commit to accelerate their transition towards climate neutrality within a longer timeframe following the Cities Mission basic principles, will also receive basic support from the Mission Platform. These cities respond to the second objective of the Mission to ensure that the cities responding to the first objective act as experimentation and innovation hubs to put all European cities in a position to become climate-neutral by 2050.

The Mission Platform should build on existing actions, including relevant ones developed through Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects. It should collaborate closely with successful ongoing initiatives that have developed knowledge and expertise, in particular with the Covenant of Mayors and their methodologies and processes co-developed with the JRC, and the Covenant Community Group of Cities Practitioners. The assets of the Smart Cities and Communities context (including Energy Communities and Living-in.eu data space for smart communities), the Smart Cities Marketplace and the Common Services Platform should be factored in, with regard to engaging public, private and civil society stakeholders to support project financing and implementation as well as the promotion of shared standards and technical specifications to facilitate data exchange and to ensure interoperability of solutions. Synergies should be ensured with the European Urban Initiative of the Cohesion Policy and with the Urban Agenda for the EU and with actions funded under the DIGITAL European Programme.

The Mission Platform will coordinate with the European Commission to ensure that advice and support provided to cities remains aligned to the latest policies and initiatives and makes full use of available tools and services provided or supported by the Commission.

In addition, it will draw in national-level support and expertise through close cooperation with the Cities Mission’s national networks, established under the calls HORIZON-MISS-2021- CIT-01-01 and HORIZON-MISS-2024-CIT-02-01.

The general conditions, including admissibility conditions, eligibility conditions, award criteria, evaluation and award procedure, legal and financial set-up for grants, financial and operational capacity and exclusion, and procedure are provided in parts A to G of the General Annexes.

This action supports the follow-up to the July 2023 Communication on EU Missions assessment[[COM(2023) 457 final and SWD(2023) 260 final]].

Specific conditions:

The evaluation committee will be partially composed by representatives of EU institutions.

This action allows for the provision of financial support to third parties in line with the conditions set out in General Annex B – Eligibility of the Horizon Europe Work Programme. The activity "Demonstrators accelerating and sustaining city climate-neutrality solutions", includes the launch of open calls for proposals to support pilots for the deployment in participating Mission cities of systemic innovative solutions. For this purpose, beneficiaries may provide financial support to third parties. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. The maximum amount to be granted to each third party is EUR 1.5 million to increase the impact of the pilot projects to be supported under the call(s) that will address the deployment of systemic innovative solutions and in order to achieve the objectives of this action. The Commission considers that the size of the pilots should range between EUR 0.5 million up to EUR 1.5 million, depending on the expected impact of the proposed projects. The selection of the third parties to be supported under the grant will be based on a review of the proposed work by external independent experts. The scope of these calls will be further defined building on and ensuring complementarities with similar initiatives developed by the projects funded under the Horizon 2020 Green Deal call topic LC-GD-1-2-2020: Towards climate-neutral and socially innovative cities[[ Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-2020, Part 20. Cross-cutting activities, Call - Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future: Research and innovation in support of the European Green Deal: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/lc-gd-1- 2-2020. The Horizon 2020 project NetZeroCities - Accelerating cities' transition to net zero emissions by 2030, Grant Agreement n. 101036519, has been selected under the Green Deal call topic "LC-GD-1- 2-2020 Towards Climate-Neutral and Socially Innovative Cities" and started its activities on 1 October 2021.]] as well as the projects funded under the Specific Grant Agreements to the FPA for the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform in the Horizon Europe Missions Work Programme 2021-2022.