A Transformative Step for Climate Neutrality: NetZeroCities Signs MoU with TIPS4PED

We are happy to announce the novel partnership between NetZeroCities and the TIPS4PED project, marking a significant milestone in the EU’s mission to achieve 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on October 18th, 2024 and sets the stage for impactful collaboration, leveraging digital tools to scale sustainable, people-centric Positive Energy Districts (PEDs).

The collaboration will allow a mutual exchange of innovative solutions from TIPS4PED and NetZeroCities’ extensive network, creating a lasting pathway to transformative urban sustainability. TIPS4PED will employ its Integrated Assessment Platform (IAP), powered by Local Digital Twin (LDT) technology, to help municipalities make data-informed decisions for designing and managing PEDs. This partnership provides a practical example of bridging climate neutrality goals with the digital tools critical to their realisation. Aligned with the EU Cities Mission, this MoU supports cities in drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, fostering environmental sustainability, and enhancing quality of life.

EU Mission for climate-neutral & smart cities

Set to support the European Green Deal and the EU Mission: Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, NetZeroCities extends its reach to all cities across Europe and Horizon-associated countries, offering tools and resources to accelerate climate action regardless of a city’s current progress. By drawing on the experiences of the 112 Mission Cities already working towards climate neutrality by 2030, the initiative helps cities shape effective strategies to achieve local and EU-wide sustainability goals, including the ambitious aim of a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. A comprehensive guide helps cities better understand the support and opportunities available to them.

Key Highlights of the Collaboration

• Mission Cities Leading the Way: The participating cities—Turin, Cork, Budapest, and Kozani—are all Mission Cities. As frontrunners, they will test and refine tools like Digital Twins and Decarbonisation Roadmaps, playing a decisive role in shaping solutions that other cities can adopt in the future. While driving innovation, some software components will remain proprietary to ensure platform sustainability.
• Integrated Approaches: The partnership will operate across policy advocacy, outreach and communication, and implementation, enabling mutual learning and aligning legacy projects to amplify impact.
• Digitalisation in Action: Demonstrating how digital tools can bridge climate goals, the project exemplifies the power of collective intelligence and collaboration.
• Sharing and peer-learning: partners from TIPS4PED and NZC will come together at regular intervals to share learnings which can be cascaded to cities and wider communities, in particular via the Knowledge Repository and social media. Communicating success stories and cross-posting information about events and publications is integral to the collaboration.

Accelerating the Climate-Neutral Cities Mission

This collaboration underlines the importance of implementation, enabling cities to leverage the EU’s policy framework for digitalisation and climate action. Building on a solid engagement of stakeholders, decision-makers, and cities, both initiatives will leverage local knowledge to mainstream action and trigger investments. In support of these fundamental actions, you are invited to engage, adopt best practices, and support the Aalborg Charter for sustainable urban development. Together, NetZeroCities and TIPS4PED are shaping the cities of tomorrow—climate-neutral, smart, and sustainable.

To learn more about the NetZeroCities EU Mission Platform, watch the video below or check out their website.