Mission Innovation Urban Transitions Mission Calls for Pioneer Cities to Join the City Cohort and Demonstrate Holistic Pathways to Net-zero
The Urban Transitions Mission (UTM) has launched a new open call for cities to join the cohort. Since December 2022, 48 cities from 24 countries are already engaging with UTM to demonstrate the integrated pathways towards holistic, people-centred urban transitions built around clean energy and innovative net-zero carbon solutions.
The Mission is now looking for 250 new pioneering cities to join this ambitious journey by 2024. Cities are invited to apply online and express their interest to join the Mission’s cohort by the 21st of September (updated deadline) through filling in a brief questionnaire, reflecting the assessment criteria, which can be found here.
A robust methodology in the selection process will ensure the readiness and commitment of cities to engage as frontrunners in innovation to support and accelerate the Mission’s goals. The expressions of interest received will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
The new cities engaging in the cohort are expected to start working with the Mission, testing, piloting and helping scale up solutions and adopt system-wide approaches to reach net-zero, starting from the end of this year.
Through the Urban Transitions Mission, cities will strengthen their existing climate and energy action plans to prioritize actions according to scientific data and evidence, and bridge implementation gaps to reach net-zero, based on innovation needs.
Launched at COP26 under the framework of Mission Innovation (MI), the Urban Transitions Mission (UTM) is a joint effort by the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and energy, the European Commission, and Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe. The Mission will mobilise decision makers across all levels of government to prioritise climate-neutral and net-zero pathways enabled by clean energy and systemic innovation across all sectors and in urban governance. The Mission will empower cities to adopt innovative solutions and help reach tipping points in the cost and scale of those solutions for urban transitions, offering an urban net-zero transition framework that builds on the knowledge and expertise of a Global Innovation Alliance of supporting partners and organizations together with the first-hand experience of cities.
