Florence, October 17, 2023. CLIMABOROUGH, co-funded by Horizon Europe, is one of the 3 projects chosen to work on Urban Planning and Design in the framework of the ‘100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities‘ Mission.

The project, coordinated by ANCI Toscana and counting on 27 other partners, including 14 cities, aims to tackle the many bottlenecks in the transition from prototyping to testing of innovation and from successful testing to market deployment.

It will launch up to 24 socio-technical pilots through a calendar of two rounds of federated public procurement of innovation calls, managed by ANCI Toscana to tackle the challenges faced by 12 European cities.

During the first round of Calls, launched today on October 17, solution providers are welcome to propose innovative and sustainable solutions to meet the needs of the 8 leaders cities of the project: Athens, Cascais, Differdange, Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, Ioannina, Maribor, Sofia and Turin.

This first round will award up to 16 pilot projects, with an overall budget of 2.400.000 euro.

The instrument chosen by CLIMABOROUGH for the call for tenders is the innovation partnership. that will be launched and managed by ANCI Toscana on behalf of the cities.

The call for tenders is open to all legal entities that can guarantee performance and fulfil the criteria stated in the Tender Regulations.

Each city has defined a specific challenge, considered central to reach the objective of the achievement of the climate neutrality by 2050 (and a reduction of 55% by 2030): Athens will work on energy and buildings, Grenoble-Alpes to model the impact of a construction project, Differdange to produce 100% of its clean electricity locally, Sofia to reduce traffic, while Maribor, Turin and Cascais need to improve the collection of textile, WEEE and biowaste, and Ioannina will concentrate on wastewater.

The various challenges are all associated with socio-technical solutions to stimulate and boost the use of data and to trigger behavioural change, also via the participation of local stakeholders at all levels.

“This federated public procurement of innovation is expected to reduce the gap between the cities and the market, via the diffusion of R&D and innovation results showing clear potential of improving climate neutrality actions in Europe”, stated Francesco Molinari, the key expert on public procurement of ANCI Toscana,

Matteo Satta and Besnik Mehmeti, joint coordinators of the project, stated: “Today, local authorities work on a constellation of pilot projects often hardly connected between each other. This is why CLIMABOROUGH works on a “circular technology” approach, as we consider that the technology exists, but we still lack capacity in its implementation, with a very negative impact on use and adoption of the various stakeholders. We believe that increasing the collaboration between cities, between startups and, between cities and startups, will have a very positive impact on stakeholders’ and citizens’ engagement, with tremendous positive impacts on climate neutrality.”.

The calendar of the tender submission of proposals is defined in various steps, however to be part of the procedure it will be necessary for applicants to apply by November 30. All the information about the tender is available on a dedicated web page:

https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/tender/

All the experiments will start during the summer 2024 and are expected to have a duration of one year.

The participation is open to all, but it requests to register at the eventbrite dedicated page:

https://www.eventbrite.it/e/climaborough-call-for-tenders-orientation-workshop-tickets-738924000577

All the details about the first Tender Call are available on the project’s website (www.climaborough.eu) and social media channels:

X (ex-Twitter): @climaborough

LinkedIn: Climaborough

Facebook: Climaborough

DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

On November 20 at 15.30 CET, CLIMABOROUGH will organize an online workshop to inform potential applicants about the call for tenders’ procedure. It will also be the occasion to meet our cities and ask them any questions about their challenges.

See the recording and the slides of the first workshop of October 30.