The project aimed to enhance and upskill the competences of municipal employees in order to enable them to design climate neutral cities strategies, such as Climate City Contracts. Furthermore strengthen the innovation and design capacity of Municipality employees regarding urban sustainable development by training them specific in strategy design and entrepreneurship. By increasing the capacity of professionals to deal with Climate Neutrality issues accurately and efficiently, they will be better equipped to transform their local authority with green initiatives and actions, in that way combating climate change locally. Furthermore, they will be able to promote and disseminate sustainable good practices to the local community, and mobilize other local stakeholders towards climate neutrality. The target group participants will be equipped with innovative digital learning tools, as well as trained on how to use them and involve them in their work, and enable distance learning. By training and upskilling professionals in designing climate neutral city strategies, sustainable development and digital innovation, they will be in a better position to assess and combat modern market needs and trends, especially regarding climate issues.
Cities cover about 3% of the Earth's surface area but produce more than 70% of greenhouse gas emissions (UN Habitat). It is estimated that by 2050 almost 85% of the population of Europe will live in urban areas. Due to the high concentration of people, infrastructure, housing and economic activities, cities are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A typical example is the phenomenon of the urban heat island, in which the temperature in urban centres is higher than that in their suburbs. Zero carbon footprint and developing urban resilience are vital to avoiding human, social and economic losses, while improving the sustainability of urbanization processes to protect the environment and mitigate the risk of disasters. The main need address by the project is the limited resources available to municipal employees and other stakeholders at a local level regarding digital training materials on designing strategies for climate neutral cities such as Climate City Contracts and to support the promotion of the EU policies focusing on the transition to climate neutrality such as the European Green Deal, EU 2030 Climate & Energy Framework as well as the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030.