The challenges of a changing climate increase the need to support municipalities, citizens and companies in the process towards a zero-carbon future. Urban energy transition is not only the local council’s duty, but includes a multitude of actors, public and private, who work in a complex set of interactions embedded within a wider regional, national and European context. Therefore, it becomes a central task for educators in the area of urban planning and development to include the dynamic integration of new energy concepts in their curriculum. The project consortium is composed of six organizations from five different programme countries: University of Applied Sciences Kehl, University of Public Administration - Germany (project coordinator), Riga Technical University, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning – Latvia, Politecnico di Torino - Italy, University Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée, Departement of Urban engineering – France, University of West Bohemia, Department of Geomatics – Czech Republic and Logiville – France. All partners are active in higher education on urban planning, but in different scientific fields (public administration, architecture, engineering, environmental management). The private partner Logiville adds its longtime experience in designing role playing games in urban planning to the partnership. The LOTUS-project aims to design the tools needed by teachers in higher education to fulfill this role by designing an interactive curriculum, which will allow Europe’s future city planners, architects and administrative staff to guide communities to a greener future and transfer successful concepts across borders and national contexts.The project partners will design a curriculum (“Curriculum on urban transition of energy - CUTE”) to be applied across different fields of studies concerned with city or energy planning. To facilitate the exchange of national experiences the partners will link their individual programs and students together in an alumni-network on the topic. Amending and underlining the shared curriculum, the partners will design an educative city planning role-playing game ("Urban Energy Management game - UrbEM") in which the students and teachers will be able to test and implement new energy concepts in a dynamic framework. To supply the role-playing game, and the regular teaching, with real world scenarios, the partners will develop a catalogue of experiences ("catalogue of real cases - CoRC"), including good practice, administrative processes based on local experiences in urban energy and climate planning across Europe as to test and facilitate the transferability of lessons learned in present and future. Furthermore, as a companion to the curriculum as well as the other project results, the project partners will compose a textbook on urban energy transition as a tool for teachers and learners in higher education. The results of the project the curriculum, the role-playing game the catalogue of cases and the textbook will be made generally available and used to pursue a further spread of “green thinking” in urban contexts through higher education. The implementation of this project will increase the awareness of, and knowledge on sustainable development issues in urban planning of students across Europe. The students acquire skills and competencies necessary to be able to master complex negotiation situations in cities during the implementation phase of energy transition projects. The impact of the overall project for cities and other institutions is the improved supply of graduates who can manage the specific requirements of the energy transition process and develop innovative solutions, tailor-made to specific urban frameworks. Therefore the potential long term benefits of the projects lies in its important contribution to achieving the climate protection goals of the European Union.
The overall objective of the LOTUS project has been to provide municipalities in Europe with the knowledge, skills and competences to successfully meet the challenges of energetic transition adapted to local, regional and national conditions. Specific objectives were: 1) To identify, collect and amend sustainable energy related goals, programs, and strategies for improved and adaptive implementation in HE; 2) To generate and enhance the knowledge of, and necessary skills for, successful urban energy transfer frameworks (e.g. national and local legislation, planning, financing system), implementation practices, involved parties, and participation mechanisms in Europe; 3) To develop, test and implement an integrated, competence and knowledge based HE program as well as teaching tools, in order to achieve better transfer of energy-transition competence in urban areas. 4) to spread these methods across institutions of HE across Europe to further the skill formation of future professionals in the field of urban planning. The objectives have been in line with the project partners objectives to strengthen the dimension of energy transition and sustainable urban development in existing curricula and to develop new training offers.
Despite the different disciplinary fields, all project partners identified the need to develop interdisciplinary educational offers, which will enable graduates to tackle local energy transition. Stakeholders involved in the implementation of energy transition processes (municipalities, local energy suppliers, urban planners etc) underlined that there is an urgent demand for holistically trained professionals in the areas of urban planning and energetic transition, who have the knowledge, skills and competences to successfully meet the challenges of energetic transition on the local or regional level. This new generation of professionals is considered paramount to enable European communities to implement sustainable energetic transition policies and make a sustainable contribution to the climate goals of the EU and the UN. To equip graduates with the necessary knowledge and practical skills to successfully cooperate with the various actors involved in energy transition processes, interactive and adaptable pedagogical tools, able to provide high quality education in a practice relevant, interdisciplinary manner, had to be jointly developed by HEIs with a great expertise in their respective discipline.