Global Knowledge Exchange Centre (GKEC) for Urban Climate Neutrality

Project Information

GKEC

Grant agreement ID: 101095976

DOI

10.3030/101095976

Project closed

EC signature date 28 November 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2025

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 1 999 909,38

EU contribution

€ 1 999 907,00

Coordinated by

OSTERREICHISCHE FORSCHUNGSFORDERUNGSGESELLSCHAFT MBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GKEC (Global Knowledge Exchange Centre (GKEC) for Urban Climate Neutrality)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Global Knowledge Exchange Centre (GKEC) is funded under Horizon Europe to establish a global community platform supporting the Urban Transitions Mission (UTM), which was launched at the COP26 in November 2021. The Urban Transitions Mission´s aim is to increase the capacity of cities worldwide, to empower cities shape urban transitions based on robust knowledge and a strong net-zero community of support and exchange.

GKEC started its activities as Urban Transitions Mission Centre (UTMC) one year later, in December 2022. Building on the European Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, UTMC supports the activities of the Urban Transitions Mission of Mission Innovation, enables a wide international knowledge and practice network of cities and urban stakeholders to accelerate transitions globally. It enables cities to build their capacity in a networking environment with access to knowledge and tools on urban systems integration, technology developments, successful policies, investment and funding opportunities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The Global Community Platform (https://utmc.app)
UTMC is providing a community platform with about 750 users, seven thematic community clusters (Finance, Governance, City scale Data&Scenarios, Transport&Mobility, Sustainable Energy, Nature-based Solutions, and Water Management) and one cluster dedicated for the UTM city cohort, with 92 City Profile Pages and their 350 members to date.
The urban transitions community platform comprises a Knowledge Repository with documents, articles, videos and city case studies, highly relevant for actors involved in urban transitions. The Global Funding Watch collects finance and funding opportunities worldwide and is currently providing 200 different funding sources and grants from about 30 different funders. The Finance & Funding Helpdesk is designed to serve exclusively UTM cites, answering queries about right financing sources for projects, about quality of plans in different stages of financing. The Framework Journey for UTM cities serve as a overarching guideline for cities to navigate the different platform modules, connecting community cluster discussions with knowledge resources and financing opportunities, as well as capacity building events, such as workshops and webinars taking place on the platform.
UTMC facilitated knowledge exchange on financing and the development of bankable projects in the Transformative Actions Program (TAP) presented in an online TAP Marketplace. The Transformative Actions Program (TAP) brings together financial institutions, project preparation facilities, and the private sector to assist subnational governments and local businesses in turning their sustainable infrastructure ideas into solid and investment-ready projects. Furthermore, UTMC supported projects in Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Decarbonisation from UTM cities Contagem (Brazil), Menjez (Lebanon) and Oldham-Greater Manchester (UK) and the city of Malang (Indonesia), to date, with many still to come.

The global community building events
With one of the target regions being the Mediterranean region, the first regional event of UTMC was targeting cities in the Mediterranean region, Western Balkans and Türkiye. It took place as side event to the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) on 9 November 2023 in Barcelona in cooperation with the Union of the Mediterranean (UfM) and MedCities. Decision makers and stakeholders from the European Commission, the Urban Transitions Mission, EIT Urban Mobility, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), MedCities, CERTH, Eurocities, ENoLL, FFG, ISGlobal, Metropolis and I2CAT were involved. City representatives from UTM city Chefchouen (Morocco) and the cities of Agadir (Morocco), Cairo (Egypt), Irbid (Jordan), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Skopje (Northern Macedonia), Tirana (Albania), and Mersin (Türkiye) participated.
In order to increase visibility and outreach to relevant stakeholders, UTMC was present at the Brussels Urban Summit 2023, the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Conference 2023 in Brussels, the Open Living Lab Days 2023 in Barcelona, and the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Conference 2024 in Brussels.
The urban transitions community is benefiting from different community building events, such as monthly Virtual Coffees, e.g. in April 2024 with UTM city Cascais (Portugal) on urban mobility, or in May 2024 with UTM city Belo Horizonte (Brazil) on water supply, wastewater management and urban drainage.
City-to city knowledge exchange sessions on different methodologies are provided, such as the exchange session with UTM city of Mannheim, presenting the mission-oriented approach and methodology of the Climate Cities Contract on 19 October 2023. Another exchange session involved UTM cities of Turku and Bogota, as well as the city of Melbourne in Green House Gas Emissions Offsetting.
UTMC complements its capacity building events with webinars on co-creation, stakeholder engagement, citizen involvement and the Living Lab methodology, such as the webinar held on 12 April 2024 on Living Lab Essentials and Methodology with Living Labs in Eindhoven (NL), Bangalore (India), and Basaksehir (Türkiye) sharing insights into their respective strategies for addressing the challenge of citizen engagement.
The monthly UTM-UTMC Newsletter brings all relevant information and links into your e-mail box.
To benefit from the Global Community Platform and take advantage of the different global community building events, urban actors just need to register!

UTMC community platform: https://utmc.app
UTMC homepage: https://urbantransitionsmission.org/centre/
UTMC Newsletter: https://8d162195.sibforms.com/serve/MUIFAJcj5qWkybpyT3oRLVgVSuPHm2UTx8pZ6olDdmydx1cJwbEorwq50LLLdbIi7kuKHKnVPweSCz1eZCIYgyXU7qw6U2GQv0rItj8vxO5_aMYb3b3pGlGsKASWuyS1XePGf7bQTaSlXyMyKUesvFXsVWJTrWq0o2T1odhKIkbLGlCR6sKi43tBcrIZVmXhUAuo_Wh2bBcCitiG

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The GKEC/UTMC community platform with 759 platform users worldwide (City officers: 274, Community of Practice and Local Partners: 358, Citizens: 75, Consortium members: 52) has big potential to become a substantial database and community engagement tool for urban transitions.
https://utmc.app

It will be of utmost importance to ensure long-term resources and engaged administrators and developers to keep up the community building activities and potential adaptations of the platform.

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