“National Competence Centre and solutions for the development of Climate Neutral and Smart Cities” (NetZeRoCities) is set to define the operational, financial, and legal conditions to create the “Romanian Competence Centre on Climate-Neutral Smart Cities” that will support Romanian cities to achieve Climate Neutrality, by 2030 for the cities selected by the EU Mission, and by 2050 by all Romanian cities.
The Competence Centre is a fail-proof structure that will be able to host a sustainable, predictive, and simplified environment for the development of RDI and business activities with focus on the contribution to climate change and the digital transition. The Centre is designed as a Hub for innovation, setting an RDI excellence flag and acting as support for cities into successfully accessing funding opportunities in HE Climate Mission, and reaching the EU Climate Mission milestones and Key Performance Indicators.
The aim is to support access to financing, to increase the innovation capacity of the CDI system for the creation of research-business environment synergies, and to create the critical mass of interdisciplinarity skills needed to address the societal challenges associated with the EU Climate Mission. The Competence Centre represents a network-of-excellence tool for increasing the chances of success with the EU Climate Mission and Carbon Neutrality goal.
The key objectives of the Competence Centre are to:
- Methodological Framework. Establish the methodological framework for the Competence Centre focusing on helping Romanian cities reach the Climate Neutrality target, with a demand-driven focus on the neds of people, local businesses, local municipality, and regional and national authorities.
- Climate-Neutral City Governance to establish models and policies of city governance for climate action. Following what worked for EU twin cities and tailored to the local and regional administrative, economic, and social barriers and needs, the Governance will support a systemic transformation of the Romanian city following a holistic approach to foster innovation and deployment. The Competence Centre will propose plans (of integrated and multi-level governance) and will help municipalities follow a strategic, holistic, and long-term climate investment approach that includes (collaboration) all relevant city actors.
- Collaboration Platform to design and implement a Platform of the Competence Centre to support the collaboration among national and European Institutions towards reaching Climate Neutrality, integrating social inclusiveness, diversity, and the participation of all stakeholders to communities’ lives.
- Climate Action Services. Increase and enhance the introduction of supporting technologies (digitalization) in Cities and support them make the technology transition on areas like clean mobility, energy efficiency or green urban planning to reach Climate Neutrality. The goal is to showcase an approach on system innovation for green transition in governance, transport, energy, construction and recycling, supported by powerful digital technologies (i.e. system innovation in the value chain of city investment).
- Climate Neutral pilots and Smart Campus. Develop best practices (for twin green and digital transformations) to make full use of data on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air pollution for smart mobility, to provide smart energy grids, improve energy efficiency in buildings, for water and waste management, and others, as such leading to increased awareness on climate change. The aim is to build an Innovation Hub (which we named Smart Campus) for cities in Romania to be inspired by, learn from, and replicate the ideas and solutions emerging from the Climate Mission.
- Net ZeroCompetence Centre. Define the operational, financial, and legal conditions for the creation of the Competence Centre for its future sustainability.