Human activities contribute a significant and growing proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the increased demand for energy and other services in urban areas – also driven by rapid population growth – exacerbating the climate challenge. There is an urgent need for actions that will substantially contribute to the Paris Agreements climate targets, to stay well below 1.5 Degrees Celsius.

Under the Urban-LEDS Phase II project funded by the European Commission, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and ICLEI are jointly implementing this project addressing integrated climate action in local governments and their cities. Using ICLEI’s GreenClimateCities process methodology, technical guidance and capacity development is provided to selected local governments, also mobilizing cities to commit to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), exploring access to financing and supporting multilevel governance to enable effective action.

ICLEI is implementing the BEA project Phase 2 in Africa through three initiatives.
1. BEA Africa Regional Network: ICLEI Africa coordinates the Africa Regional Network for BEA where organisations working across Africa on issues of building efficiency share lessons, current practices, and coordinate their work. Through this network, organisations are able to connect and align their efforts to ensure cities across Africa are well-supported to improve building efficiency. ICLEI is actively recruiting cities and private sector partners to be members of the BEA Partnership.
2. BEA Deep Dive in City of Tshwane, South Africa: ICLEI Africa, in partnership with the Green Building Council of South Africa, is implementing one of eight global BEA Deep Dive engagements in the City of Tshwane, South Africa.
3. Leadership Grant: Audit and training of implementtion of South Africa’s national building efficiency legisation in three municipalities in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

ICLEI has supported Fórum CB27 since its creation in 2012, and, in 2017, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation invited ICLEI to contribute to the institutional strengthening of the group through a strategic planning process and regular facilitation of CB27 meetings. ICLEI’s mission is directly connected to the Forum’s activities, in that it seeks to connect cities and local governments dedicated to sustainable development.
As a strategic partner of CB27, ICLEI supports its planning, content curation and meeting preparation, communication strategies, advocacy cooperation, and operation of the Executive Secretariat of the Forum, as well as actively participates in meetings and activites and coordinates advocacy strategies.

Cities are growing and changing so fast that many authorities are struggling to cope. ICLEI’s aim is to boost sustainable urban development, through city-to-city International Urban Cooperation (IUC) on and foster sub-national actions under the Global Covenant of Mayors initiative. ICLEI supports regional innovation strategies and inter-regional cooperation for local and regional development.

Establishing transdisciplinary foundations
– Facilitate, organize and conduct Urban-Regional Innovation Partnerships (URIPs) dialogues
Developing a novel nature based solutions assessment framework
– Engage stakeholders in Utrecht and Malmö in a multi-criteria method to determine stakeholder values.
– Extend the learning process to the other URIPs in a two-day workshop.
– Identify how current insights and existing methods and models can be combined, improved and further developed.
Enabling conditions for systemic integration
– Participate in the methodological workshop and co-design of the research protocol.
– Undertake the work on systemic integration at the EU level.
Realising the potential of NBS
– Launch the Nature4Cities platform
– Disseminate Nature4Cities through ICLEI member cities
– Support community events
– Draw on contacts with municipal government
– Undertake a scenario back-casting exercise with the URIPs and 15 ICLEI member cities
– Hold a 1.5 day workshop with the URIP members and participants at the ICLEI Resilient Cities congress
Creating trandisciplinary capcity & delivering NATURVATION
– Generate conference/journal papers

ICLEI is in particular involved in Replication-Exploitation and Dissemination-Stakeholder Engagement tasks. In order to identify additional markets, feasibility studies will be performed to replicate the concept in specific contexts such as Emergency and Reconstruction sites. Specific business model to foster the commercialization of the FC gensets will be developed also through the commitment of industrial stakeholders and local authorities, who will interact with the consortium through webinars and workshops. In order to foster project replication, EVERYWH2ERE will involve industrial and public stakeholders alike from early on in the project within two dedicated Interest Groups. ICLEI will be leading the regions and cities interest group to promote project replication, the deployment of gensets and advancing urban hydrogen agendas. The presence of ICLEI, will guarantee a strong interaction with EU local authorities which play a fundamental role for the promotion of these technologies through specific policy and regulatory schemes.

ICLEI will publish policy guide for upscaling the use of hydrogen gensets in European cities.

Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF),The Global Platform for Sustainable Cities (GPSC) is a partnership and knowledge platform that promotes integrated solutions and cutting-edge support for cities seeking to improve their urban sustainability. ICLEI, together with WRI and C40, serve on the GPSC Resource Team. The Resource Team facilitates peer exchange and provides high-level technical assistance, capacity development and curated knowledge products to local and regional governments to advance sustainable, and integrated, urban development. The GPSC RT serves local and regional governments by implementing a needs assessment and offering peer exchange, delivering training and promotional events and webinars and creating new and curated knowledge products. By situating city-level implementation projects in a broad sustainability framework, ICLEI, as a member of the GPSC RT, offers a holistic approach to urban development.

The Building Energy Efficiency Accelerator (BEA) assists sub-national governments in speeding up the process of adoption of best-practice policies and implementation of building efficiency projects, with the goal of doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvement in the building sector by 2030.

ICLEI is the regional lead for all activities in Southeast Asia.The BEA process of engagement in a city includes support for: Assessing and prioritizing locally-appropriate policies and actions; Implementing actions, through matching needs with expertise, resources and tools; Tracking action and documenting progress, and sharing lessons learned. BEA engages cities through a menu of policy options and key actions based on needs, and activities the partnership can provide in each location. Cities prioritize policies and activities, and the partnership connect them to resources and engagement around those priorities.

Through the project, ICLEI will support 20 cities, with emission inventories, targets and guidelines for mitigation. It includes preparation of an inventory of GHG emissions and atmospheric pollutants; future emission scenarios for 5, 10, 20 and 40 years, with reduction targets; institutional implementation strategies and inventory review mechanisms; and training of RMC technicians in the GPC methodology to allow the initiative to be internally replicated in the inventory review processes.

The Urban Transition Alliance connects industrial legacy cities from Europe, USA and China committed to accelerate ambitious and inclusive transitions, as well as showcasing their sustainability leadership. Alliance cities share their own transition experiences, knowledge and good practices based on social, economic and environmental challenges within their unique industrial legacy context. Through a tailored exchange platform hosted by ICLEI, the Alliance helps cities to identify and leverage expertise to co-create implementation strategies for sustainability-related projects.

During the current project phase, the ICLEI further encourages the Alliance member cities to include an equity-based approach in their transition projects, not only to achieve climate and environmental targets, but also to provide opportunities to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Alliance cities receive support on key equity-focused sustainability issues through two challenge cycles in 2020 and 2021 with 4-5 challenge topics selected per round. The outcomes of these challenge support cycles will shape a blueprint of lessons and good practices for cities worldwide on how social equity and climate action can reinforce each other.

Within this project ICLEI Europe is responsible for the exploitation & dissemination.
This includes:
to develop and curate the SMARTEES multimedia presence throughout the project and after the project,
to develop a dissemination and exploitation strategy for the SMARTEES results to all relevant stakeholder groups,
to monitor the implementation of the dissemination and exploitation activities and document the impact,
to develop and program the policy sandbox IT tool in a light and pro version, including developing and implementing the workshop concept.

ICLEI leads EXCESS’ communications and dissemination work package as well as specific replication activities with the aim of raising awareness of the benefits of PEBs, engaging industry and the public sector and roll out rapid replication of PEBs in Europe. The additional role of ICLEI in the project is to assess the proliferation of Plus Energy Buildings across the EU, by means of stock taking, interviews and statistical analyses.

The EcoMobility Alliance is a network of selected committed cities led by innovators and visionaries, supported by experts and businesses. The EcoMobility Alliance cities are a select group of ambitious cities that have achieved positive results in specific dimensions of sustainable mobility, and that strive to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel-based personal automobiles. The vision is that of vibrant cities, where communities and organizations can access goods, services, people and information in an ecomobilemanner. Through a service-oriented structure, collective learning exercises, peer-to-peer exchanges and joint activities, Alliance Cities help each other to reach self-set goals. An Alliance Secretariat along with a group of partners support Alliance Cities through their expertise, experience, and technology. ICLEI works with the Alliance to promote and advocate for ecomobility in cities, towns and rural settlements on the basis of its beneficial effects on health conditions, air cleanness, noise avoidance, and efficient use of public space, energy efficiency and citizens’ savings.

ICLEI is the Local Building Efficiency Accelerator Lead Partner, taking responsibility to plan and execute the work plan, to coordinate participating cities and stakeholders, and to facilitate the engagement among business and local governments in East Asia.

ICLEI maintains a long-lasting relationship with participating cities and partners by building an active and easy-to-reach communication channel, provides technical assistance to support cities in applying for international funding, and assists cities to develop commitment and form a feasible work plan.

Through the Building Efficiency Accelerator, local governments in China and Mongolia have ICLEI as a reliable partner to inquire about practical information for policy design and planning, to have access to international funding opportunities for project implementation and replication, and to strengthen the relationship with non-governmental stakeholders. The Building Efficiency Accelerator and ICLEI support local governments to cross the institutional, financial, and behavioral barriers.

ICLEI is responsible for project implementation in all four partner cities, including preparation of Climate Resilient City Action Plan for four Indian partner cities – Coimbatore, Rajkot, Siliguri and Udaipur – that addresses both climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation using ClimateResilientCities methodology; strengthening the capacities of cities to identify, plan and implement measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for enhancing resilience to climate change; implementation of quick win projects to showcase reduction of GHG emissions; identification and planning for bankable projects based on requirements of the cities for large scale implementation of climate resilience building activities; and peer learning and exchange. Measures developed as a result of this project are being integrated in municipal budget to mainstream climate resilience in city development.