Global Platform for Urban Climate neutrality (GPUC)

Cities are an important engine for global economic growth and socio-economic development. By 2030, almost 5 billion people (about 60 percent of the global population) will live in cities, leading to massive requirements for energy to power growth and expand basic infrastructure. Energy efficiency can offer practical solutions to budget-constrained cities to meet their energy needs without sacrificing development or environmental priorities. In recent years, cities have increasingly been recognized as an influential tier of decision-making in relation to the global clean energy transition underway.

Despite the availability of energy-efficiency technology and many well-proven approaches to city energy efficiency investment, however, non-market barriers still impede energy efficiency’s full potential in deployment. The global climate crisis, geopolitical crisis and the impact of the COVID-pandemic have contributed to an increased public consciousness of the need for security of energy supply, decarbonization, and sustainable development. After COP26, several countries have announced their targets for carbon neutrality. As the main action takers, many cities are planning for their own carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality targets to support the national targets.  However, current efforts are not enough to reach the climate target in line with the Paris Agreement. Municipal governments, especially in developing and emerging economies, are facing existing barriers to the implementation of climate targets, such as lack of capacity, lack of data, lack of access to tools and best-in-class methodologies, access to funding, and possible business models.

Objective

Global Platform for Urban Climate neutrality (GPUC) aims to establish a one-stop-shop to provide cities in developing and emerging economies with quick access to information, technical solutions, capacity building and technical support for the implementation of energy efficiency and achieving climate neutrality targets. Moreover, cities can learn from each other on the GPUC platform on specific topics.

The final objective is to accelerate the process of intervention design, implementation, and replication of energy efficiency in cities for their long-term targets of carbon neutrality in developing countries and emerging economies. The focus will be on developing countries and emerging economics, with a continuation work developed in previous periods, for example in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, among others. The similarity of interventions across like-minded cities allows for the standardization of various processes and procedures of the intervention cycle, including planning, evaluation, design, matchmaking, and procurement. In this way, GPUC aims to mitigate risks, ease the establishment of monitoring frameworks, and enable the dissemination of lessons learnt and further replication. Active knowledge management forms an integral part of the GPUC. Meanwhile, GPUC sustains a platform for knowledge sharing among cities and other relevant stakeholders, technical solution providers and financing institutions.

Activities

Activity 1 – Develop pilot projects

Activity 1 includes: 1) to develop methodologies of developing technical roadmaps, action plans and long term planning under the cities’ target of carbon neutrality and/or climate resilience; 2) to complete pre-feasibility studies on energy efficiency and/or district energy projects in selected or identified pilot cities; 3) to facilitate the procurement or MRV frameworks for implementation of pilot energy efficiency projects. In the period of 2023, the focus of the work will be in identification of pilot cities or pilot projects through wide-range consultation of local stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations.

Activity 2 – Build up partnerships for GPUC

Activity 2 includes: 1) to communicate and agree on the organizing and governance framework of GPUC with the key partner of Germany Energy Agency (dena) and other potential partners; 2) to build up the EE partnership with middle-size cities in the pilot developing countries; 3) to organize partners meetings or working group meetings for matchmaking technical needs, selected topics among city partners and other stakeholders; 3) to engage with other relevant international or domestic organizations for the GPUC partnership.

Activity 3 – Capacity building and awareness raising

Activity 3 includes: 1) to develop E-training module series of energy efficiency based on the mapping of capacity building needs and consultations with local stakeholders in pilot countries or cities; 2) to develop virtual knowledge sharing centers in collaboration with partners; 3) to develop or adapt energy efficiency tools on specific topics.

The Global Platform for Urban Climate neutrality (GPUC) is implemented by the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (Danida).