Through the Spanish platform citiES2030, promoted by El Día Después and itdUPM, and the Swedish platform Viable Cities, promoted by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), municipal representatives from both countries meet to exchange experiences on how to accelerate the transition to climate neutral and sustainable cities using climate contracts.
Last Wednesday, 16 February, a key event for the European climate transition in cities took place. For the first time, representatives from Swedish and Spanish cities met to exchange experiences on how to accelerate the transition to climate neutral and sustainable cities.
“All these participating Spanish and Swedish cities have real experience in working to implement climate contracts, and can contribute with many ideas,” said Julio Lumbreras, coordinator of the citiES 2030 platform and professor at the UPM.
Albert Edman, head of internationalisation at Viable Cities, pointed out the importance of these spaces for interaction. “We hope to continue and deepen this collaboration, as we want to accelerate at all levels: local, regional, national and European.
The participating cities from Sweden were Gothenburg, Järfälla, Lund, Malmö, Stockholm, Umeå, Uppsala and Växjö. And from Spain, Barcelona, Madrid, Soria, Valencia, Valladolid and Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Since 2020, nine Swedish cities are working, within the Viable Cities platform, on the “Climate City Contract”, a tool to strengthen and accelerate the transition to climate neutrality of cities.
In Spain, this same model is being implemented by citiES2030, a platform for the acceleration and implementation in Spain of the European Commission’s mission to achieve 100 climate-neutral cities by 2030.
Organised by the European NetZeroCities initiative, this is the first in a series of interactions to learn together and develop a close collaboration between Swedish and Spanish cities to achieve the European mission.
The upcoming meetings will focus on 3 key themes: the design of climate contracts, governance models, and partnerships and financing.