Second prize winner in category Green Transition and Sustainability in EPSA 2023-24
Context
The Provincial Capital of Klagenfurt on Lake Wörthersee has been engaged in climate action since the 1990s and joined the Covenant of Mayors in 2011, committing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the improvement of energy efficiency. To further these goals, Klagenfurt adopted the Smart City Strategy in 2018. The overall mission of the strategy is for Klagenfurt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reach climate neutrality by 2030. The strategy entails actions in nine policy areas including mobility, energy, urban development and digitalisation to address technical, ecological, economic and social challenges due to climate change. Moreover, the Smart City Strategy strives for creating space for innovation in local governance structures including participatory processes in cooperation with cities, communities and stakeholders in the urban agglomeration of the provincial capital Klagenfurt.
In October 2023, Klagenfurt was awarded the Label of the EU Mission for Climate-neutral and Smart Cities. The EU Mission Label recognises cities’ plans to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 and aims to facilitate access to public and private funding. Klagenfurt is one of ten cities that have been awarded this, and is Austria’s only city to be part of the EU Cities Mission 2030.
Objectives
In line with the Smart City Strategy and the EU Mission Label, the overall objective is to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. To this end, 83 per cent of greenhouse gases are to be directly saved compared to the base year 2011 and 17 per cent of the remaining emissions are to be compensated through climate protection measures in Klagenfurt and the central are of Carinthia.
This overall objective includes a catalogue of measures in the different policy areas to reach specific targets in each area. Hence, the Smart City Strategy has the ambition to further progress towards achieving key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To monitor progress and to inform the City’s climate policy, an annual monitoring report is presented to the city council based on which the implementation strategy is updated.
Implementation
The Department of Climate and Environmental Protection was charged with coordinating the implementation of the Smart City Strategy. To achieve the objectives enshrined in the strategy, a collaborative governance structure has been set up consisting of the city administration’s internal departments and the city’s energy provider (Stadtwerke Klagenfurt), with the central coordination office anchored in the Climate and Environmental Protection Department. This structure includes cooperation with educational institutions and businesses. Nine working groups have been set up in accordance with the respective competencies of the respective city departments to work on achieving the sub-goals of their fields of action. Each field of action consists of three sub-goals, SDG-based indicators for measuring progress and a comprehensive catalogue of measures for working through more than 230 current specific measures and projects. To monitor progress towards SDGs, indicators specifically for cities was developed.
The measures and projects are partly implemented with the help of national and international funding projects. To support the implementation of the project, particularly with regard to the acquisition and implementation of funding, the International Project Management Agency Klagenfurt (IPAK) was founded in 2010 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the city and organisationally integrated into the Climate and Environmental Protection Department. The IPAK employs staff specialised in project acquisition and implementation. It provides organisational capacity for ensuring the financial viability and thus sustainability of the strategy. The city’s newly built governance structures, which have now been awarded the Cities Mission Label by the European Commission in the Climate City Contract, are responsible for the creation, quantification of further CO2 balances and, above all, the implementation of other key measures.