Decarb City Pipes 2050

Climate urgency calls on allpolitical levels to act more stringent and faster. This proposal is the firstto unite cities across Europe to work out actionable, spatially differentiatedtransition roadmaps to decarbonise heating and cooling for buildings in 2050,taking up the challenge to phase out natural gas in heating.

Transitioning the sector toenergy-efficient, renewable and zero-carbon solutions is key to meet the EUclimate and energy targets. Given the long life-cycles of the gridinfrastructures involved, there is an urgency to start the planning of thistransition today. But how? What first? Which systems? How to govern thisprocess? Increasing complexity of the energy system together with technologicaluncertainties require a high level of knowledge and skills to act wisely.Cities are illequipped for this. They lack capacity and skills as well as legalempowerment to act.

Decarb City Pipes 2050 showcases howlocal authorities can succeed in this challenge. Bilbao, Bratislava, Dublin,Munich, Rotterdam, Vienna and Winterthur, seven cities from frontrunners tobeginners join forces to learn from each other and elaborate innovativeresponses together. They explore pathways suitable for their local challengesand build up skills in the use of data, planning tools and instruments,techno-economic as well as process and transition management knowhow. In aparticipatory process with stakeholders, they develop tangible transitionroadmaps, building up trust and commitment for its implementation along theway. In deep peer-to-peer exchanges, cities and utilities share knowledge tobenefit from other perspectives, stages of advancement and planning traditions.

Together, they will advocate for the needed changes to framework conditions. Enriched by a distinguished advisory board, the project aims to empower more than 220 public officers and improve more than 50 policies. Ultimately, it strives to motivate and support more than 80 cities to start the same roadmap process.

Energy Cities is supporting the consortium via sharing its experiences on different tools and the best practices from past projects (such as Hotmaps). We also organise the peer-to-peer exchanges between cities, provide guidance on citizen engagement and support advancing the policy framework at EU-level. In addition Energy Cities is leading the work on communication and dissemination, so that the outcomes of the project benefits to our network and all cities across Europe.