White paper N.2-Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission Cities

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

Present 2026 2027 | 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034

EU funding programs:

Horizon Europe

FP10

START OF EU FP10

Mission "100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030"

SGA3-NZC

NZC

Alignment to EU strategic priorities

SGA-NZC

Research gaps and recommedations

Meta recommendations

SGA2-NZC

Innovation in Policy and Governance

Alignment to EU programs

Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

EU funding programs

EU research and innovation framework program (FP)

EU Missions

Mission Cities

NetZeroCities

Consultations

Three mutual learning events organised in the project NetZeroCities bringing together researchers, cities, representatives of the European Commission, government networks, businesses, civil society, and technology experts working within the Mission framework:

Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

Mutual Learning event Feb. 2025 in Brussels

At the Cities Conference June 2024 in Valencia

At the Cities Conference May 2025 in Vilnius

Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

NetZeroCities research

NetZeroCities mapping of related projects

Scaling and Replication

NetZeroCities policy briefs, CCC highlight and deliverables

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research andinnovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101121530 - SGA-NZC

Contacts

4B

Promote Intersectional approaches in STEAM, improving accessibility

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

Meta-reccomendations

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

KEY RECOMMENDATION

DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS

More research is needed to investigate changes in governance and public organisations’ structures, aiming at systemic change for reaching climate neutrality through adaptive governance. Research should aim to understand and optimise how the implementation of the systemic approach to climate neutrality reshapes municipal operations and governance at local, regional and national levels, and understand how municipalities can collaborate more effectively with academia and research institutions to become self-sustainable climate-neutral urban ecosystems.

• Research to understand the shift of role of the municipality to adaptive governance and the profound changes in governance and public organisational structure it requires

• Incentives for increasing the mutual understanding of researchers and municipalities

• Barriers posed by academic careers evaluated on the basis of academic publications, while making research relevant for cities requires additional effort

• Large-scale policy experimentation with (randomised) control trials

• To analyse scientific evidence from multiple sectors and domain (not only technological), define actions based on scientific evidence, and then have structured processes to compare academic literature with data from cities, and share results with related funded projects utilising harmonised categories

Gaps

• Research to inform next-generation curriculum and training pedagogy / professional education in sustainability

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

Meta-reccomendations

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

KEY RECOMMENDATION

DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS

Longitudinal research is needed to investigate effective financing instruments of portfolios of climate actions, related legal aspects and policy incentives for municipalities (including mechanisms for derisking), developing effective training programmes in climate finance for public administrators to mobilise, plan and orchestrate the necessary public and private funds for achieving climate neutrality in cities, aiming at carbon reduction as well as carbon removal. Research would accelerate project preparation for access to public and private finance, supported by the assessment of advanced solutions for regulatory streamlining and policy development.

• Understanding the most effective, feasible and legally viable ways for municipalities to collaborate and co-design the city’s portfolios of actions with the private sector, utilising diverse financial mechanisms for different projects and bundles of projects

• Need for public administrators to acquire abilities in mapping (local, regional, national and international) actors with whom to co-design the city’s climate action plan, to ensure the plan can be financed and implemented.

• Planning and project preparation phase: co-designing with the private sector, financing actors, civic organisations (as intermediaries or multipliers)

Planning and project preparation phase

• Research on identifying the most effective financing instruments and type of business model/investor for specific infrastructure/sectors/actions/bundles of actions

• Preparation of projects for access to finance

• Simplification and shortening of feasibility assessments

• De-risking innovative financing mechanisms

• Innovative procurement models

Gaps

• Financing: Longitudinal research on the long-term effects of how the public sector can effectively shape markets

• How to design and operationalise financial instruments that can fund integrated portfolios of urban climate actions

• Enabling governance models that allow municipalities to blend EU, national, and private finance & regulatory sandboxes to attract and test investment

Financing phase

• Risk sharing mechanisms and innovative insurance and re-insurance solutions. Implications of on financing instruments for infrastructure investments, resulting from carbon pricing, carbon certificates and carbon removal and resulting cash flow streams

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

Meta-reccomendations

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

KEY RECOMMENDATION

DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS

Research should be funded to investigate the effectiveness of capability-building programmes for public administrators and experts in diverse formats (including online and in-person learning between cities) on the ability of local governments to adopt a systemic approach to climate planning and implementation, that enables the activation of the local ecosystem toward the most effective climate actions. More research is needed for longitudinal and comparative analysis to understand the effectiveness of portfolios of climate actions implemented by cities across projects and Missions (on emission domains, levers of change, financing methodologies, regional and demographic factors), in order to support cities in learning how to unlock systemic innovation with an integrated portfolio approach and deriving generalisable knowledge for the scientific community and for informing European and national capability-building activities.

• Investigate in the long term and depth, cities’ climate actions through data collection for identifying best practices for diverse contexts, to be shared in learning programmes for cities, with the academic community, as well as to inform EU and national policies

• Connect municipalities’ needs and lessons learned from the Mission and other funded projects with scientific literature to foster evidence-based interventions and reciprocal learning

• Calls for research projects could request two-way learning mechanisms

• Research & learning frameworks should be city-centred, integrated with other initiatives that cities are part of, such as the other Missions, NEB, etc.

Gaps

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

Meta-reccomendations

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

KEY RECOMMENDATION

DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS

Research should support the coordination of in-depth longitudinal data analysis and sharing across climate projects and initiatives. Future research could further strengthen and align integrated, adaptive climate quali-quantitative longitudinal monitoring systems that allow a systemic understanding and monitoring of the city. Monitoring and learning systems based on interoperable digital infrastructure that align and coordinates local, regional, and national governance levels, would enable cities and researchers to identify the most effective climate actions in diverse contexts, track their implementation and outcomes in terms of GHG emissions and co-benefits through a catalogue of standardised plus customizable process and outcome indicators that integrate mitigation, adaptation and climate-related governmental planning as well as well-being. These systems should integrate qualitative reflexive learning mechanisms, enabling cities to monitor, assess, recalibrate, and scale climate strategies based on continuous feedback and new conditions.

• Cities’ challenges and data generated in the project can provide a wealth of knowledge for all European cities for comparative, in-depth, longitudinal analysis

• Continuous refinement of a catalogue of actions-related indicators and automatic monitoring systems and guidance that are relevant for cities’ planning needs and coordinated, integrated with other Missions and global standards

• Further development of indicators and data requirements based on cities real needs for financing and implementation (with process indicators), coordinated across EU funded projects and Missions related to Climate

• Strenghten standardised data-sharing protocols at all governance and transversal levels

• City-centred, integrated and user-friendly data visualisation dashboard for each city, based on cities’ journey in climate planning

• Develop integrated urban-regional-national decision-support systems

• Collective sensemaking

• Investigate effective citizens’ behavioural change (barriers, best practices, contextual factors)

• Joint repository of data, learning and communication material

• Increase data literacy within municipalities and local authorities

Gaps

• Long-term longitudinal qualitative-quantitative assessment

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

Meta-reccomendations

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

KEY RECOMMENDATION

DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS

Further research is needed to support cities’ experiments with new and risky climate-critical cross-sectorial technologies for mitigation through pilots, replicating and up-scaling them. More research would help to identify current best practices developed by cities in integrated climate action planning that include transport, energy and built environment infrastructures, as well as deriving knowledge on cities’ experimentations with novel and converging technologies and decarbonisation solutions, such as energy generation, carbon removal technologies, and their financing. Such research would benefit from structured mechanisms for pan-European knowledge sharing in learning programmes, to provide cities’ climate leaders and experts guidance on preparing the uptake of novel technologies: knowledge-based decision making is central when selecting novel technologies based on GHG/economic/social return on investment especially when technologies are immature, costly and with uncertain viability. Integrated planning of actions across emission domains should specifically be directed toward measuring and ensuring equitable access to infrastructures.

• Cross-sectoral barriers

• Cities recognise that their biggest issue is to coordinate stakeholders to move together in the same direction, aligning timelines

• Infrastructure barriers

• Cross-sectoral, integrated urban systems and Infrastructures

• Need for support in coordinated systemic planning

• Integrated climate planning

• Experiments for new and risky climate-critical technologies for mitigation through pilots and adaptive governance

• Investigte carbon removal solutions

• Ensuring equitable access to novel solutions and services integrated to infrastructures

Gaps

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

Meta-reccomendations

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

6. Scaling and Replication

KEY RECOMMENDATION

DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS

More research is needed to understand how climate action can be prioritised and sustained even when political support is lacking, integrating cultural change initiatives into urban planning and policy frameworks, media communication and institutionalising collaborations with research projects on education. Research should investigate the effectiveness of replication strategy through funding mechanisms that support widening the participation of Mission Minded cities and smaller cities that are geographically and culturally near large (i.e., Mission) cities, that would otherwise find difficult to have the capacity to participate in ambitious EU-funded projects.

• Longitudinal research is needed to understand if, how, and under which conditions the replication strategies deployed by NetZeroCities enable ecosystemic long-lasting changes

Scaling out

• Mechanisms to involve smaller cities geographically and culturally near large (i.e., Mission) cities, that wouldn’t otherwise have the capacity to participate in ambitious EU-funded projects.

• Sustained in the absence of political lack of support

Scaling up

Gaps

• Reshaping societal values and practices & institutionalised collaborations with research projects on education

Scaling deep

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

4. Leverage Monitoring and Assessment Frameworks for Cities’ Learning and Planning

6. Scaling and Replication

2. Effective Funding of Urban Climate Actions

3. Learning and Capability Building for Systemic Climate Action

5. Cross-sectorial collaboration on Infrastructure and Technology

1. Innovation in Policy and Governance

Meta-reccomendations

Meta-recommendations on EU research funding in the Mission(s)

The research events with cities and researchers have provided suggestions that transcend specific topics to optimise research in the Mission(s). - To strengthen the impact of research funded through the Mission, developing a robust community of researchers and network of universities/research institutions on climate action in cities (including climate neutrality, adaptation and beyond) would bring different strengths and cultural perspectives, in addition to formal disciplinary expertise. The NetZeroCities project has started to provide an initial platform for such networking and joint events, that researchers can join. - Research effectiveness would be optimized by developing initiatives or projects that aim at coordinating (funded) projects across climate-related topics with online and offline events and setting up opportunities for joint open-access indexed publication.

Unleashing a Research Agenda for the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities”

White paper N.2

2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 | 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034

FP10

Mission "100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030"

NZC

SGA3-NZC

SGA-NZC

SGA2-NZC

Alignment to EU strategic priorities

Implementation

Preparation

112 MISSION Cities

EU funding programs

EU research and innovation framework program (FP)

EU Missions

Mission Cities

NetZeroCities

48 CITIES in the enabling city transformation (testing)

104 CITIES in the PILOT PROGRAMME

79 cities in the TWINNING PROGRAMME

All Cities

NetZeroCities deliverables policy briefs, CCC highlights, etc.

PROJECTS AND RESEARCHers

NetZeroCities research

Events for researchers

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research andinnovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101121530 - SGA-NZC

Contacts

4B

Promote Intersectional approaches in STEAM, improving accessibility

2. Detailed Recommendation

Cities recognise that their biggest issue is to coordinate stakeholders to move together in the same direction, aligning timelines. Researchers also face the challenge of working with academics of other domains due to different mindsets, research methods and typologies of target publications.

Contacts

• Sabrina Bresciani | sabrina.bresciani@polimi.it
• Francesca Rizzo | francesca.rizzo@polimi.it
• Nikhil Chaudhary | nikhil.chaudhary@climate-kic.org
• Joanna Kiernicka-Allaven | joanna.kiernicka-allavena@climate-kic.org

Contributors: Sabrina Bresciani 1 sabrina.bresciani@polimi.it, Francesca Rizzo1 francesca.rizzo@polimi.it, Marzia Mortati 1 marzia.mortati@polimi.it, Nikhil Chaudhary2 nikhil.chaudhary@climate-kic.org, Emma Puerari emma.puerari@polimi.it, Rohit Mondal 1 rohit.mondal@polimi.it Francesco Ripa1 francesco.ripa@polimi.it , Pirita Lindholm3 pirita.lindholm@errin.eu, Silvia Ghiretti3 silvia.ghiretti@errin.eu , Mari Hukkalainen4 mari.hukkalainen@vtt.fi , Julia Kantorovitch4 julia.kantorovitch@vtt.fi , David Dooghe5 david.dooghe@tno.nl , Ulf Kanne6 u.kanne@southpole.com , Asen Charliyski7 asen.charliyski@bwb.earth Joanna Kiernicka-Allavena2 joanna.kiernicka-allavena@climate-kic.org 1 Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design2 Climate-KIC 3 European Regions Research and Innovation Network4 VTT | Technical Research Centre of Finland5 TNO6 South Pole7 BwB | Bankers without Boundaries

Visual by Angelica Gomez | angelicaalejandra.gomez@polimi.it

12. Detailed Recommendation

More research projects to study the assessment of risk sharing mechanisms and innovative insurance and re-insurance solutions would allow to test novel funding mechanisms. Future research should assess the implications of on financing instruments for infrastructure investments, resulting from carbon pricing, carbon certificates and carbon removal and resulting cash flow streams, investigating ways to integrate climate adaptation actions (in coordination with the Mission Adaptation), calculate and monetise co-benefits, and facilitate possibilities to establish viable business cases.

Research gap

European municipalities voice the need to increase practical knowledge on all aspects of sustainability (mitigation, adaptation, pollution, justice, etc.) and institutionalise internal capacity to guide their cities toward climate neutrality. Strengthening multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder climate planning requires institutionalised learning. As enacted in NetZeroCities, Pan-European learning should continue being supported and expanded to cater for a larger number of participants, who would benefit to learn from other cities. Thus, research should be funded to investigate in the long term and depth, cities’ climate actions through data collection for identifying best practices for diverse contexts, to be shared in learning programmes for cities, with the academic community, as well as to inform EU and national policies. Such a learning programme to up-skill and re-skill city stakeholders should thus be based on research evidence and include, in addition to the sustainability topic, developing capabilities in public finance data and digital, artificial intelligence and/or integrated planning future literacy/scenarios, climate leadership, media communication, and systemic innovation. Skills shortage in climate and energy is considered a threat to Europe’s competitiveness. The EU Cities Mission is a prime example of how the EU can effectively support the collaboration between research institutions and local administrations, proving the potential of research as a catalyst for more effective local climate action. Within the Mission, the NetZeroCities Pilot Cities Programme has supported planning and implementation of systemic change at a large scale, with peer-to-peer learning mechanisms. In NetZeroCities, research on municipalities’ needs, transition teams' development, and requests for expertise on specific topics provide structured pathways for developing knowledge and learning programmes that respond to cities’ needs.

9. Detailed Recommendation

Research projects should be dedicated to the continuous (yearly) monitoring of quantitative and qualitative cities’ data, providing insights to cities based on analysis and comparison to other similar cities (with aggregated data), as well as providing insights to national and EU policy makers, and coordinating across projects the communication and dissemination of best practices through scientific and media outlets (instead of having separate websites for each project), creating a joint repository of data, learning and communication material. Data sharing protocols should ensure that data is accessible to all relevant stakeholders, enabling them to make informed decisions in support of climate goals by effectively managing resources.

6. Detailed Recommendation

Such knowledge would be useful to inform and coordinate research, projects and programmes (such as Erasmus+) to inform policies in next-generation curriculum and training pedagogy, including professional and executive education in sustainability.

8. Detailed Recommendation

As procurement is a relevant lever for sustainability, more research into innovative procurement models (e.g. outcome-based procurement, pre-commercial procurement) and (national) strategies that can de-risk investments and accelerate the adoption of climate-neutral solutions should be conducted.

4. Detailed Recommendation

Such long-term research & learning frameworks should be city-centred, therefore integrated with other initiatives that cities are part of, such as the other Missions: Adaptation, Oceans & Water, and Soil, as well as initiatives including the New European Bauhaus (facility), would also allow an easier coordination between EU funded projects. Future research projects could embed tasks dedicated to aligning and integrating with relevant projects, initiatives and Missions, through joint events or publications (scientific or pragmatic), to avoid replication of work across projects. Such collaborations should also include educational institutions, funded projects and activities (i.e., funded with the Erasmus+ programme) to investigate and design how to systemically and structurally enhance knowledge on climate action at all education levels, monitoring the effectiveness on societal norms (for scaling) and students interested and uptake of STEM.

9. Detailed Recommendation

Financing: Longitudinal research on the long-term effects of support mechanisms and funding models implemented in the Mission Cities (Capital Hub) and related initiatives would be beneficial to support policy development while concurrently informing EU-related projects and the design of future EU calls. Such longitudinal research would also inform financial and regulatory training necessary for public administrators and consultants to take on this unprecedented role. The results of research on financing climate action would inform policy frameworks on how the public sector can effectively shape markets and orchestrate the collaboration between diverse actors to co-develop and finance actions toward the Mission of climate neutrality.

1. Detailed Recommendation

As municipalities can only provide 10-20% of the massive investment of € 307bn (NetZeroCities, 2025) required to achieve climate neutrality in cities, public organisations need to shift their role to become orchestrators of non-governmental actors that can finance and implement the required portfolio of actions to lower GHG emissions at the required pace, financing infrastructures and projects. This unprecedented change requires public administrators to acquire competence in finance literacy, legal aspects, risk analysis and decision making, as well as the ability to collaborate and co-create strategic urban plans with the private sector and finance specialists and institutions. Cities voice the need to have support in understanding the most effective, feasible and legally viable ways for municipalities to collaborate and co-design the city’s portfolios of actions with the private sector, utilising diverse financial mechanisms for different projects and bundles of projects.

Research gap

Addressing climate change is an unprecedented challenge: the Mission approach (EC, 2018) requires public administrations to change their role into orchestrators and creators of the urban ecosystem to unlock funding and change citizens’ behaviour toward climate neutrality: this shift of role of the municipality to adaptive governance requires profound changes in governance and public organisational structures3, such as by creating transition teams for easier collaboration across sectors, and facilitating long-term structured cross-sectoral collaborations with research institutions and urban actors outside the municipality, while supporting capability building for reshaping municipal operations and governance at local, regional and national levels to achieve long-lasting systemic change in resilient socio-ecological systems. An analysis of the Climate City Contracts of the first cities that received the Mission label highlights that “institutional barriers are the most significant obstacles cities face in achieving climate neutrality. The primary institutional barriers consist of regulatory challenges and fragmentation of responsibilities across different government levels.” Research funding should be dedicated to investigating best practices, barriers and enablers to understand and thus optimise this historical shift in the role of public administration toward a Mission approach. Cities define research as an “enabler”; working with researchers gives public administrators access to cutting-edge research. Yet, cities suggest that research funding should provide incentives for increasing the mutual understanding of researchers and municipalities to improve on-the ground collaboration, for example, with secondments or shadowing programs aimed at developing “research through implementation”. To achieve this, researchers highlight the barriers posed by academic careers evaluated on the basis of academic publications, while making research relevant for cities requires additional effort, not only in “translating” academic work into products that are used by cities, but also time to understand the processes of municipalities, which cannot be directly translated into scientific outputs. Thus, academia needs to consider a different system of incentives for the promotion of researchers who create a valuable impact for society in addition to scientific papers, i.e., designing structured processes and mechanisms to translate research outputs into products relevant and directly usable by cities. These collaboration mechanisms between municipalities and research should be studied to identify best practices of transdisciplinary research to replicate. Municipalities and regions share that they feel overwhelmed by the complexity of having to learn to tackle climate mitigation and adaptation in addition to their operations, and are constrained by existing plans and a lack of funding. An analysis of Mission Cities Climate City Contracts found that they are built on existing planning and implementation efforts: “Over 50% of cities referenced their existing (Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP)/Social Economy Action Plan (SEAP) or SUMP as foundational elements of their CCCs. The analysis reveals a notable gap in cross-sectoral integration at the action planning level.”

4. Detailed Recommendation

The systemic innovation of urban socio-technical systems necessary to reach deep decarbonisation requires an orchestrated portfolio of cross-sectoral, integrated urban systems and Infrastructures. While the need is recognised and shared among academics, experts and public administrators, its planning and implementation is still challenging in terms of integrated urban planning, climate action planning, integrated funding, and harmonised monitoring and decision making that involves numerous actors at different levels (politicians, municipal experts across various city departments, owners and managers of local buildings and climate-critical infrastructures and systems) with different political agendas.

11. Detailed Recommendation

Further research is needed, particularly on identifying enabling governance models that allow municipalities to blend EU, national, and private finance effectively, as well as on regulatory sandboxes to attract and test investment for (market-ready, socially empowered) climate innovations

Contacts

• Sabrina Bresciani | sabrina.bresciani@polimi.it
• Francesca Rizzo | francesca.rizzo@polimi.it
• Nikhil Chaudhary | nikhil.chaudhary@climate-kic.org
• Joanna Kiernicka-Allaven | joanna.kiernicka-allavena@climate-kic.org

Contributors: Sabrina Bresciani 1 sabrina.bresciani@polimi.it, Francesca Rizzo1 francesca.rizzo@polimi.it, Marzia Mortati 1 marzia.mortati@polimi.it, Nikhil Chaudhary2 nikhil.chaudhary@climate-kic.org, Emma Puerari emma.puerari@polimi.it, Rohit Mondal 1 rohit.mondal@polimi.it Francesco Ripa1 francesco.ripa@polimi.it , Pirita Lindholm3 pirita.lindholm@errin.eu, Silvia Ghiretti3 silvia.ghiretti@errin.eu , Mari Hukkalainen4 mari.hukkalainen@vtt.fi , Julia Kantorovitch4 julia.kantorovitch@vtt.fi , David Dooghe5 david.dooghe@tno.nl , Ulf Kanne6 u.kanne@southpole.com , Asen Charliyski7 asen.charliyski@bwb.earth Joanna Kiernicka-Allavena2 joanna.kiernicka-allavena@climate-kic.org 1 Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design2 Climate-KIC 3 European Regions Research and Innovation Network4 VTT | Technical Research Centre of Finland5 TNO6 South Pole7 BwB | Bankers without Boundaries

Visual by Angelica Gomez | angelicaalejandra.gomez@polimi.it

3. Detailed Recommendation

Calls for research projects could request two-way learning mechanisms that integrate evidence-based insights from applied, transdisciplinary research, enabling mutual exchange across sectors and creating reflexive learning loops to support systemic, long-term climate action – while informing research.

7. Detailed Recommendation

Further research is needed to support cities in enabling experiments for new and risky climate-critical technologies for mitigation through pilots and adaptive governance, which would also support Europe’s entrepreneurship and competitiveness in green technologies, as well as energy independence, reducing external vulnerabilities.

2. Detailed Recommendation

Cities define research as an “enabler”; working with researchers gives public administrators access to cutting-edge research. Yet, cities suggest that research funding should provide incentives for increasing the mutual understanding of researchers and municipalities to improve on-the ground collaboration, for example, with secondments or shadowing programs aimed at developing “research through implementation”.

4. Detailed Recommendation

Scaling deep: Research on climate action should focus on investigating the piloting of reshaping societal values and practices towards sustainability by examining how cultural and social contexts’ influence can be innovated to activate long-lasting ecosystemic change toward deep sustainability as a societal value, integrating cultural change initiatives into urban planning and policy frameworks, involving artists, famous personalities, collaborating with national and private media. Lastly, funded projects within the Missions should have institutionalised collaborations with research projects on education (including the Erasmus+ programme).

Research gap

Monitoring and assessment mechanisms are fundamental for climate action to support cities in defining urban, regional and national plans based on evidence of climate actions’ effectiveness, track progress of actions, and adapt strategies based on data. Such data are relevant to inform polices and research. Cities often struggle to measure baselines and progress and to identify useful and standardised, quantifiable metrics that are harmonised across all urban and regional planning systems. The reasons lie in (i) the lack of alignment across local, regional, and national levels of governance and the related monitoring systems; (ii) lack of data or disperse data from diverse sources (and projects) and difficulty in their integration and continuous update in a single system due also due also to diverse standards and requirements across initiatives; (iii) dependence on data literacy of decision makers and policy makers at urban and regional level to analyse actions’ effectiveness and impact of behavioural, (iv) the need of adaptability of such monitoring systems to the diverse needs of small, medium, large cities that have diverse capacity and dedicated personnel, and (v) the lack of integration of citizens’ behaviour tracking and detailed information on citizens’ needs based on their gender, age, and potential vulnerabilities. Cities ask for support in integrating circular economy and measuring/impacting Scope 3 emissions and progress (not only outcomes). In NetZeroCities, the 112 Mission Cities are monitoring their progress in GHG emissions through existing platforms (MyCovenant and CDP-ICLEI Track) and assessing the progress toward their plan through the Climate City Contracts iterations. In addition, structured sensemaking sessions for knowledge sharing between cities are organised at set timeframes to allow for reflexivity during the process35. The experience, cities’ challenges and data generated during the process can provide a wealth of knowledge for all European cities if research funding is provided for comparative, in-depth, longitudinal analysis of NetZeroCities data and integrated with other projects of the Mission(s).

6. Detailed Recommendation

Research would be beneficial on the organisational structures and support services which substantially increase the speed of the project preparation process with the cities, facilitating access to finance for sustainable infrastructure. In addition, research should be funded on simplification and shortening of feasibility assessments, e.g. through benchmarking, international know-how management and exchange, digital twins and simulation tools.

5. Detailed Recommendation

Cities find difficulties in project preparation: more research is needed for developing tools and mechanisms to support cities in the preparation of projects for access to finance.

1. Detailed Recommendation

The analysis of Climate City Contracts of the first half of the Mission Cities that received the city label found that cross-sectoral barriers are the most significant challenge, with over 350 identified Barriers. This strong finding highlights the need for stronger collaboration across sectors to overcome institutional-related challenges in climate actions.

7. Detailed Recommendation

Future research could fund selected pilots in partnership with municipalities and regulators to test the de-risking innovative financing mechanisms (e.g. outcome-based contracts, municipal debt swaps, blended finance structures) and then scale the learning and support to all EU cities.

5. Detailed Recommendation

Future research could be made more effective if research collaborations not only support cities in designing and testing actions for improving internal governance, policies and regulatory models, but also in providing evidence from scientific research that informs the selection of actions with the highest return on investment in terms of GHG emissions reduction, economic and social aspects. For developing comparative analysis, projects and initiatives should join forces to analyse scientific evidence from multiple sectors and domain (not only technological), define actions based on scientific evidence, and then have structured processes to compare academic literature with data from cities, and share results with related funded projects utilising harmonised categories, in order to build cross-project pan-European knowledge on effective governance structures, uncover national and geographic specificities, identify best practices in orchestrating cross-sector collaboration, development of policy labs and prototyping “Mission-oriented Policy approach” mindsets in the public administration.

5. Detailed Recommendation

The NetZeroCities impact pathways and Transition Map provide a valuable example of theorisation and guidance of the systemic approach for urban transitions. In addition, cities voice the need for support in coordinated systemic planning among projects and Missions, and other initiatives such as SECAPs (currently adopted by over 4000 cities).

1. Detailed Recommendation

In the Cities Mission, through the Mission platform, the 112 Mission Cities are monitoring their progress in GHG emissions through existing reporting platforms (MyCovenant and CDP-ICLEI Track) and assessing the progress toward their plan through the Climate City Contracts iterations. In addition, structured sensemaking sessions for knowledge sharing between cities are organised at set timeframes to allow for reflexivity during the process36. The experience, cities’ challenges, barriers and best practices, and data generated during the process can provide a wealth of knowledge for all European cities if research funding is provided for comparative, in-depth, longitudinal analysis of NetZeroCities data and integrated with other projects of the Mission(s).

8. Detailed Recommendation

Cities voice the need to monitor citizens’ behaviour to assess actions and policies’ effectiveness, thus such monitoring and learning platforms should be developed to integrate social and behavioural metrics, including citizens’ and the private sector’s behaviour, engagement with cities’ climate initiatives and the development of social innovations. Research on behavioural change tools, is necessary for cities adopting a systemic approach to integrate behavioural climate actions to assess the effectiveness of policies and planned actions to calculate their return of investment and necessary adjustments.

10. Detailed Recommendation

Specifically, research should be funded to understand how to design and operationalise financial instruments that can fund integrated portfolios of urban climate actions (not single projects), reflecting the systemic nature of climate neutrality transitions.

3. Detailed Recommendation

A EU coordinated monitoring and assessment framework (i.e., based on initiatives such as the EU Covenant of Mayor) that include also behavioural progress data and social benefits of actions, should ensure that indicators and data requirements are based on cities (and regions) real needs for planning, financing and implementation (with process indicators in addition to outcome indicators) rather than top down choices, and that are coordinated across EU funded projects and Missions related to Climate with data-sharing protocols, to provide cities a useful, timely, standardised but customisable platform for data integration and visualisation45 (lowering their data collection burden by integrating data requirements across projects an initiatives).

3. Detailed Recommendation

Planning and project preparation phase: Based on NetZeroCities’ experience, research could study cities’ best practices and barriers in co-designing with the private sector, financing actors, civic organisations (as intermediaries or multipliers), including close collaboration and early involvement of investors for the best possible alignment of public interest and financial requirements, starting at the pre-feasibility level.

4. Detailed Recommendation

Cities would benefit from support in selecting actions and policies to implement that have been successfully tested in other similar cities. Thus, research funding should support analysing large-scale policy experimentation with (randomised) control trials, similar to extra-European policy labs

1. Detailed Recommendation

Scaling out: Longitudinal research is needed to understand if, how, and under which conditions the replication strategies deployed by NetZeroCities enable ecosystemic long-lasting changes, investigating how to support the innovation of public administration organisational structures to strengthen collaboration across stakeholders and sectors for effective policy design and implementation.

6. Detailed Recommendation

More research is needed to identify best practices developed by cities in integrated climate planning that include developing and decarbonising transport, energy, and built environment infrastructures, and integrating innovative technologies and solutions into those (e.g., smart grids powering EVs and energy flexibility, district heating linked to retrofits). Special focus would be needed on developing viable means for financing, funding and business models for these integrated solutions, since fragmented infrastructure has high upfront costs. Integrated planning requires cross-sector capacity building for systemic integration of solutions of diverse emission domains, which is a necessary element when making climate neutrality a shared responsibility.

Research gap

As municipalities can only provide 10-20% of the massive investment of € 307bn (NetZeroCities, 2025) required to achieve climate neutrality in cities, public organisations need to shift their role to become orchestrators of non-governmental actors that can finance and implement the required portfolio of actions to lower GHG emissions at the required pace, financing infrastructures and projects. This unprecedented change requires public administrators to acquire competence in finance literacy, legal aspects, risk analysis and decision making, as well as the ability to collaborate and co-create strategic urban plans with the private sector and finance specialists and institutions. Cities voice the need to have support in understanding the most effective, feasible and legally viable ways for municipalities to collaborate and co-design the city’s portfolios of actions with the private sector, utilising diverse financial mechanisms for different projects and bundles of projects and blended finance, in order to be able to finance the entire portfolio of climate actions required to reach climate neutrality. Future research should investigate which type of infrastructure, actions and projects are best financed with which instruments, in particular, regarding bundles of projects, blended finance, and specific return on investment of actions by emission domain/sub-domain. Contrary to the past, cities cannot limit themselves to what they can finance if they want to achieve climate neutrality, and yet the portfolio of climate actions required to achieve climate neutrality cannot be decided by the municipality a priori for then looking for funding: in order for the portfolio of climate actions to be financeable, it needs to be co-designed with potential funding entities. Consequently, cities highlight the need for public administrators to acquire abilities in mapping (local, regional, national and international) actors with whom to co-design the city’s climate action plan, to ensure the plan can be financed and implemented. NetZeroCities provides a flagship example of large-scale support in increasing urban public administrators’ finance literacy, support and implementation for over 100 European cities through dedicated experts and a Climate City Capital Hub. The Capital Hub has been set up to act as a two-way bridge, bringing finance into Mission cities and taking evidence from the Mission cities back into financing markets. By leveraging the Capital Hub, NetZeroCities ensures that research leads to implementation and finance gets embedded in actionable pathways, replication strategies, and even policy frameworks at EU and national levels. The Capital Hub is amplifying the impact of the Mission Cities and accelerating Europe’s transition to climate-neutral urban systems, making sure that what we learn through the Mission can translate into financeable, scalable action. The knowledge gained through the implementation of what is possibly the largest experiment in the world in providing support to cities’ financing for climate actions should be investigated in depth to provide insights for policies and replication in other cities.

1. Detailed Recommendation

Research should be funded to investigate in the long term and depth, cities’ climate actions through data collection for identifying best practices for diverse contexts, to be shared in learning programmes for cities, with the academic community, as well as to inform EU and national policies. Such a learning programme to up-skill and re-skill city stakeholders should thus be based on research evidence and include, in addition to the sustainability topic, developing capabilities in public finance data and digital, artificial intelligence and/or integrated planning future literacy/scenarios, climate leadership, media communication, and systemic innovation. Skills shortage in climate and energy is considered a threat to Europe’s competitiveness.

9. Detailed Recommendation

Finally, as improved infrastructure and technology rollouts risk deepening inequalities, future research should be specifically directed toward measuring and ensuring equitable access to novel solutions and services integrated to infrastructures (e.g., affordable EV charging, community-owned renewables, inclusive retrofit schemes), developed through co-design for developing just infrastructure solutions. Such research would provide the EU with relevant information for strategising technologies to support competitiveness, increasing security and decreasing dependencies.

Research gap

The analysis of Climate City Contracts of the first half of the Mission Cities that received the city label found that cross-sectoral barriers are the most significant challenge, with over 350 identified Barriers. This strong finding highlights the need for stronger collaboration across sectors to overcome institutional-related challenges in climate actions. Cities53 recognise that their biggest issue is to coordinate stakeholders to move together in the same direction, aligning timelines. Researchers also face the challenge of working with academics of other domains due to different mindsets, research methods and typologies of target publications54. In addition, “infrastructure barriers, namely those inherently linked to the infrastructure and technologies necessary to achieve climate neutrality, were [...] significantly identified by the cities (18%). The required size of infrastructure and high upfront costs of climate mitigation were most often mentioned for this category”. The systemic innovation of urban socio-technical systems necessary to reach deep decarbonisation requires an orchestrated portfolio of cross-sectoral, integrated urban systems and Infrastructures. While the need is recognised and shared among academics, experts and public administrators, its planning and implementation is still challenging in terms of integrated urban planning, climate action planning, integrated funding, and harmonised monitoring and decision making that involves numerous actors at different levels (politicians, municipal experts across various city departments, owners and managers of local buildings and climate-critical infrastructures and systems) with different political agendas. The NetZeroCities impact pathways and Transition Map provide a valuable example of theorisation and guidance of the systemic approach for urban transitions. In addition, cities voice the need for support in coordinated systemic planning among projects and Missions, and other initiatives such as SECAPs (currently adopted by over 4000 cities).

3. Detailed Recommendation

Scaling up: research should develop and test the effectiveness of institutional frameworks that facilitate the transfer of climate innovations from local to regional and national levels for long-term climate planning. More research is needed to understand how, in the diverse national contexts, climate action can be prioritised and sustained in the absence of political lack of support. The efficacy of diverse push-pull strategies should be studied: aggregating funded projects and open access communication kits organised in local languages, media monitoring, media agenda setting and increasing collaboration between funded projects to share resources, with a harmonised resource tagging structure.

5. Detailed Recommendation

Research should focus on refining the indicators set defined in the Mission Cities with additional and customizable city-centred and user-friendly data collection and visualisation platform and dashboard that are specific for each city, and based on cities’ journey in climate planning and monitoring of implementation (developed with user journeys), for instance integrating a city participation to (EU-funded) projects, learning events and pan-European sensemaking sessions with the aim to have a single dashboard in which a city can integrate its data with qualitative insights, reflexive loops (as demonstrated in the Mission Cities by the Sensemaking Sessions for Pilots and Mission Cities).

3. Detailed Recommendation

To achieve this, researchers highlight the barriers posed by academic careers evaluated on the basis of academic publications, while making research relevant for cities requires additional effort, not only in “translating” academic work into products that are used by cities, but also time to understand the processes of municipalities, which cannot be directly translated into scientific outputs.

7. Detailed Recommendation

Cities, as well as recent research findings, emphasise the need for platforms that support participatory approaches towards data collection, knowledge co-creation and collective sensemaking towards systemic climate transitions. This makes data platforms more inclusive and responsive, helping to ensure that cities’ climate actions are transparent, evidence-based, and aligned with contextual needs and priorities. To ensure that climate strategies remain adaptable to changing conditions over time, the development of qualitative reflexive monitoring systems that enable “learning through reflection” is fundamental.

4. Detailed Recommendation

Facilitating collaboration across governance levels is strictly related to the development of standardised data-sharing protocols. Research should investigate how data and learning can support the communication, interplay and alignment among various levels of government to support understanding how cities-regional-national governments learn together. To this aim, research should coordinate to organize interoperable data spaces and IT infrastructures that simplify cities’ data collection, including governance and policy measures for data sharing across governance levels and with external organisations, as well as structured learning loops building on existing tools and platforms.

11. Detailed Recommendation

Finally, long-term longitudinal monitoring and qualitative-quantitative assessment are needed to ensure that all the learning enabled by the Mission is not lost but can be replicated by all European cities. NetZeroCities can be considered a best practice compared to most current research projects in terms of providing the structure to consider long-term changes and impacts, and research on the project outcomes should be funded to assess in depth coordinated analysis for the academic and practitioner communities.

2. Detailed Recommendation

Scientific support is needed to continuously refine the catalogue of indicators developed by the Mission Cities, related tracking system and instructions that are relevant for cities’ planning needs and coordinated across EU Missions (in particular the Mission Adaptation), funded projects, as well as EU and international initiatives beyond the EU Covenant of Mayors, including NEB, UN SDGs, C40, as well as possibly coordinated with national governments’ monitoring systems. Building on the Mission Cities’ indicators framework and related Barometer, such coordinated system could improve and ease cities’ work by integrating digital monitoring technologies, including digital twins and sensors (i.e., those under development in EU-funded projects), to ease cities’ data collection and integration, and provide user-friendly data visualisation and decision support systems for urban planners (especially for small and medium-sized cities that might not have the capacity and capability for advanced data analysis). It should include machine learning and green AI, especially for the sectors producing the highest amount of GHG emissions (stationary energy/buildings and transport).

4. Detailed Recommendation

As NetZeroCities advances, new data is expected to be available on the type of financing instruments and business models that are most typically successful for specific typologies of projects and emission sub-domains: research on identifying the most effective financing instruments and type of business model/investor for specific infrastructure/sectors/actions/bundles of actions (including analysis or risks and rewards) would be particularly beneficial for all cities to scale.

6. Detailed Recommendation

Equipping cities with scientific tools aimed at supporting adaptive decision-making is a crucial aspect to help cities track, compare, assess, and select the most suitable climate actions to implement and, even more importantly, to adapt through time. To support this process, research could focus on developing integrated decision-support systems (DSS) that support cities in integrated planning and monitoring, based on such structured data through multicriteria decision making and AI that include actions and their environmental, economic and social return on investment, including disaggregated data on vulnerable populations and inclusivity aspects.

2. Detailed Recommendation

Contrary to the past, cities cannot limit themselves to what they can finance if they want to achieve climate neutrality, and yet the portfolio of climate actions required to achieve climate neutrality cannot be decided by the municipality a priori for then looking for funding: in order for the portfolio of climate actions to be financeable, it needs to be co-designed with potential funding entities. Consequently, cities highlight the need for public administrators to acquire abilities in mapping (local, regional, national and international) actors with whom to co-design the city’s climate action plan, to ensure the plan can be financed and implemented.

2. Detailed Recommendation

Future research should be structured to provide smaller cities the opportunity to join ambitious research projects by involving smaller cities geographically and culturally near large (i.e., Mission) cities, which are defined as, that wouldn’t otherwise have the capacity to participate in ambitious EU-funded projects.

3. Detailed Recommendation

In addition, “infrastructure barriers, namely those inherently linked to the infrastructure and technologies necessary to achieve climate neutrality, were [...] significantly identified by the cities (18%). The required size of infrastructure and high upfront costs of climate mitigation were most often mentioned for this category”.

1. Detailed Recommendation

Addressing climate change is an unprecedented challenge: the Mission approach (EC, 2018) requires public administrations to change their role into orchestrators and creators of the urban ecosystem to unlock funding and change citizens’ behaviour toward climate neutrality: this shift of role of the municipality to adaptive governance requires profound changes in governance and public organisational structures, such as by creating transition teams for easier collaboration across sectors, and facilitating long-term structured cross-sectoral collaborations with research institutions and urban actors outside the municipality, while supporting capability building for reshaping municipal operations and governance at local, regional and national levels to achieve long-lasting systemic change in resilient socio-ecological systems

8. Detailed Recommendation

Further research on carbon removal solutions would be beneficial to understand how to integrate them into infrastructures. Research is needed to understand their financial and non-financial impacts and co-benefits and their potential, including bioenergy with carbon capture (BECCS) and their effects on the city's net-zero targets and policies. This includes the work with carbon certificates as well as carbon trading and pricing for solutions, which are established in addition to the existing trading of emission allowances in the EU-ETS market.

Research gap

Scaling strategies in transition are typically categorised in three typologies: scaling out, scaling up and scaling deep: Scaling out involves replicating successful innovations in new locations or contexts to a larger number of stakeholders. In NetZeroCities, structured replication strategies have been conceived since the start of the project with a Twinning programme, peer to peer online at paced timeframes between Mission Cities, in-person learning and knowledge sharing, as well as scaling by sharing the methodology and key learnings with Mission minded cities and all cities beyond the 112 Mission Cities through learning programmes and development of National coordination platforms. In the context of the Mission, gaps in scaling out remain in investigating the effectiveness of the scaling strategies deployed if no specific support is provided for the financing of projects planned by cities that do not belong to the 112 Mission Cities that have access to the Capital Hub. Most large European cities are Mission Cities because they have the capacity and internal structures to undertake the climate-neutral Mission: smaller cities face the challenge of capacity in terms of human resources, skills in English, finance, data integration and analysis and sustainability, as well as municipality structures and funds to be able to replicate Mission cities’ approach. Likewise, volunteer and civic organisations might be available to collaborate on EU-funded projects for free but lack the connections and administrative skills to be formally part of proposals; thus, the European Commission could consider more agile and diverse forms of partners’ participation in projects. Scaling up involves influencing higher-level systemic structures, including policies, regulations, governance structures and institutional norms, to create broader and more sustainable change. NetZeroCities is addressing policies, regulations, governance structures and institutional norms as a core lever of change, at European and (more recently) national level, addressing the variety of Member States’ different political and regulatory environments. It supports the development of policy labs, policy sandboxes for experimentation, as well as national dialogues and the development of coordination platforms. Yet, research gaps remain in investigating country differences in climate policy. Further work is needed to adapt and sustain scaling-up mechanisms to local contexts and beyond political will and support, and even in the absence of political support64. Scaling deep focuses on changing cultural values, beliefs, and practices to sustain long-lasting transformation. In the context of the Mission Cities, scaling out has not yet been directly addressed as the Mission focused on providing cities with support for planning and implementation, yet cities have pointed to the relevance of addressing communication and cultural norms first, as a prerequisite for stakeholder involvement in deep decarbonization.

10. Detailed Recommendation

Equally important is research that supports the development of data literacy within local authorities. Strengthening this capacity ensures that data-driven strategies are not only technically robust but also contextually meaningful and actionable. Enhanced data literacy can improve both the relevance and practical application of climate-related data and its communication.

2. Detailed Recommendation

Future research should also connect municipalities’ needs and lessons learned from the Mission and other funded projects with scientific literature to foster evidence-based interventions and reciprocal learning, providing evidence of “change through learning”. Quantitative insights should be complemented by cities’ lived experiences, capturing barriers and effective implementation strategies.