Florence, December 10, 2023. During the year 2023, the CLIMABOROUGH project, co-funded by Horizon Europe, has worked in collaboration with the 8 cities of Athens, Cascais, Differdange, Grenoble-Alpes, Ioannina, Maribor, Sofia and Torino, to launch a call for tender asking innovators to propose climate solutions to specific challenges in various fields. ANCI Toscana – the association of Tuscan Municipalities, coordinating the project – has published an innovative procurement procedure, worth 2,4 million euro, in mid-October and is now evaluating the candidatures received by the deadline of November 30, 2023.

Globally the tender has been a huge success so far, with more than 100 economic operators presenting 64 applications through consortia or individual candidatures from 15 countries all over the EU.

At the end of this evaluation round, CLIMABOROUGH expects to select up to 6 solution providers per city, who will be invited to present technical descriptions of their proposed solutions, which will be negotiated bilaterally prior to their pricing, to ensure the best fit with the local requirements. That makes up to 48 consortia or individual bidders, out of the 102 received candidatures, a good success rate overall”. 

Simone Gheri, director of ANCI Toscana, acting as the single responsible person of the procurement procedure , released the following statement: 

“This public procurement of innovation aims to provide 8 cities with the services and products they need, during their climate transition. The huge participation to this tender shows the interest around this procedure, quite unusual in the EU scenario, as it cuts across the country borders and genuinely promotes the participation of the best solution providers, irrespective of their nationality and the location of the problems to be solved. Looking at what already exists, and may only need a testbed for validating and valorizing its innovation, is a unique opportunity to avoid reinventing the wheel over and over again”.

Matteo Satta, the CLIMABOROUGH scientific coordinator on behalf of ANCI Toscana, added:

“We are very interested in this procedure as it tries to innovate the European cities approaches to achieving climate neutrality, leveraging the potential of public procurement, a familiar instrument to public administration, in the broader context of innovation promotion. We expect more cities or city associations to be involved in future replicas of the procedure, learning from past mistakes and sharing what can be taken stock of immediately. Today, cities need to create solutions together, and the advantage of an initiative like this, invoicing 8 cities, is its multiplication factor which speeds up the process and its results”. 

All details about the tender and its results are available on the CLIMABOROUGH project’s website (https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/)  and social media channels:

X (ex-Twitter): @climaborough

LinkedIn: Climaborough

Facebook: Climaborough

See the decree of the Director General establishing the evaluation committee and the minutes of the first public gathering, held on December 14, 2023.