With Europe’s urban areas being home to over two-thirds of the EU’s population, local authorities play a key role as the closest governance level to EU citizens in accelerating the green transition. However, local authorities often lack the technical and financial capacity to plan, design, pilot and implement highly integrated approaches, strategies and investments.

Supporting uptake of innovative solutions for the green transition addressing interconnected challenges of circular economy, zero pollution, nature and biodiversity, energy transition and/or climate action in urban spaces is key to increase efficiency and effectiveness of actions at urban level to deliver on the EU environmental, climate and energy objectives.

In a context of limited resources and multiple priorities, this specific funding topic intends to support the green transition in urban spaces in a cross-sectoral and integrated way. It aims to bolster the capacity of urban local authorities to adopt integrated approaches and to unlock the potential of interconnections between the various environmental, climate and energy challenges existing at urban level and addressing them in a cross-sectoral and integrated way e.g. on circular economy, zero pollution, nature and biodiversity, clean energy transition and climate action.

By offering support to local authorities to develop and implement ambitious integrated approaches that can effectively provide solutions to key challenges across the environmental, climate and energy policy areas, it is expected to contribute to the implementation of various union environmental, climate and/or energy legislation and/or policies in urban spaces and to maximise the co-benefits of an integrated approaches.

Proposals should aim to deliver pilot projects, ambitious impactful integrated solutions and approaches, demonstrations of new technology, and/or support to uptake of integrated green technologies and/or innovative approaches to governance models.

Proposals shall target one or more challenge(s) belonging to at least 2 of the three main fields of intervention of the LIFE Programme (Environment, Energy and Climate) AND addressing at least three of six thematic areas of intervention:

Main field of Intervention: ENVIRONMENT

• pollution (including air, water, soil pollution)
• resource efficiency (including circular economy and waste management)
• nature restoration and biodiversity

Main field of Intervention: ENERGY

• energy transition (including renewables, energy efficiency and/or clean heating and cooling)

Main field of Intervention: CLIMATE

• climate change mitigation
• climate change adaptation

Proposals must address cross-sectorial policy objectives and tackle several of the identified challenges simultaneously. The choice of the main fields of intervention – Environment, Energy, Climate (at least two out of three) and of the thematic areas of intervention (at least three out of six) must be indicated in the Abstract of the Application Form and must be explained in Section 1.1 (Compliance with the Call topic).

Proposals shall be ambitious and of scale, demonstrate a significant degree of integration and demonstrate concrete activities with associated expected results and impacts, for a critical number of inhabitants. They shall demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the interlinkages between the targeted areas of intervention. Proposals may include innovative integrated policy planning and monitoring, including solution design, planning and implementation, spatial and environmental mapping, data collection and monitoring, evaluation and verification measures. Where relevant, proposals shall seek solutions unlocking private finance including public-private partnerships, blended concepts etc.

Applicants are required to clearly showcase in their project proposals – and as part of the implementation if awarded – why the proposed integrated approaches and solutions represent more efficient solutions that maximise co-benefits in the other targeted thematic areas of intervention. They shall also, when relevant, foresee specific activities aimed at generating other co-benefits such as economic benefits, citizen engagement and just transition and/or innovation and knowledge generation.

Proposals should include a convincing plan on the engagement of key stakeholders in the relevant technical and financial sectors, including citizens, as well as a plan for long-term capacity building within the public administrations.

Concrete actions shall be built-in to ensure scalability, including, where relevant, awareness raising, knowledge/experience sharing and feedback to policy development and implementation.

It is expected that proposals include an initial cost benefit analysis that would be further developed during the project.

For cities already participating in the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities mission under Horizon Europe, involvement in this LIFE initiative will require a clear demonstration of how the proposed project complements and adds value to their existing work within the mission, ensuring a coherent and synergistic approach.

Furthermore, proposals are encouraged to build on and seek interconnections with other existing EU initiatives such as the European Urban Initiative (former UIA), the Covenant of Mayors, the Clean Energy for EU islands, the Horizon Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, the European Green Capital Award (EGCA), the European Green Leaf Award (EGLA), Green City Accord, Climate Pact, Resilient Cities and Health Observatory.

The project proposal should foresee a collaboration between the different actors necessary for the successful implementation of the proposed solution, e.g. municipal companies, public administrations, private companies, research and civil society organisations etc.

Proposals involving more than one municipality, from different eligible countries are particularly encouraged.