The objective of CoolHeating is to support the implementation of "small modular renewable heating and cooling grids" for communities in South-Eastern Europe. This will be achieved through knowledge transfer and mutual activities of partners in countries where renewable district heating and cooling examples exist (Austria, Denmark, Germany) and in countries which have less development (Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzigowina). Core activities, besides techno-economical assessments, include measures to stimulate the interest of communities and citizens to set-up renewable district heating systems as well as the capacity building about financing and business models. The outcome will be the initiation of new small renewable district heating and cooling grids in 5 target communities up to the investment stage. These lighthouse projects will have a long-term impact on the development of "small modular renewable heating and cooling grids" at the national levels in the target countries.

The project ‘Institutionalized Integrated Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans’ (2ISECAP) aims to bridge the gap between local sustainable energy planning and implementation by supporting the capacity building of public authorities and by developing interface capacities within public authorities to engage with civil society towards energy transition. 2ISECAP will attempt the creation of an institutional environment for effective decision-making processes combining the democratic legitimacy and legal power of formal plans/policies with the creativity, energy and social capacity of bottom-up initiatives, entrepreneurship and community involvement. 2ISECAP will develop and apply an innovative holistic approach for participatory and integrated sustainable energy and climate actions planning that considers the required institutional tools, legal frameworks and local initiatives. Emphasis will be given on driving the sustainable energy transition at cities level through the Climate City Contracts. The planning approach will enhance SECAPs visibility and implementation capacity and the development of sustainable relationships between government and civil society. 2ISECAP utilizes the Living Lab (LL) concept to activate participants to co-create knowledge, energy plans and future policies. The project will provide experiential learning to 6 European Municipalities, by applying 2ISECAP approach to revise/develop their SECAPs, within a LL environment. Eight EU Countries are involved in 2ISECAP. Over 100 public officers will enhance their institutional and technical capacity on participatory integrated planning and governance structures engaging civil society on local energy transition. At least 6 institutionalized collaborations between public authorities are expected to derive and about 30 policies to be influenced. In total, more than 1,300 stakeholders will be informed on Integrated SECAP planning and 5,500 citizens will be involved in the project’s activities.

PROSPERITY will: 1. Produce a culture shift in terms of environment for SUMPs in member states and in the organisational culture of transport planning in city authorities. 2. Get ministries and national agencies to play a national leading role on SUMPs, as in many member states these are the organisations from which cities take their main direction; where ministries are already playing this role, to support and strengthen their approach. 3. To provide mechanisms and tools for Ministries to take this lead role. 4. Analyse clearly the problems of (lack of) take-up of SUMPs – to understand from cities themselves why they are not taken up and then to help cities to address these barriers. 5. Extend the existing 25-county EU-SUMP-network with at least two more countries 6. Get more cities to take up effective high quality SUMPs – through cities’ involvement in the project and indirectly through more cities hearing about SUMPs in their country. 7. Ensure that these SUMPs contain and will lead to implementation of a broad range of innovative sustainable transport measures. 8. Build cities’ capacity to develop and implement SUMPs that genuinely reflect the spirit of the EU SUMP Guidelines, rather than being mandatory documents to fulfil a requirement linked to major transport infrastructure. 9. Deliver a measurable impact. The core concept of PROSPERITY is bringing ministries into the project, which will significantly enhance the visibility of the project at the national level and therefore increase numbers of cities active on SUMPs. Thus PROSPERITY will ensure that more cities commit to SUMPs that are in line with the EU SUMP Guidelines and that include a broad range of innovative measures. This will generate a high leverage factor, especially in regions and cities where take up is so far low and the impacts from transport are severe – therefore the majority of PROSPERITY activities is in such regions and cities - thus in southern, central-eastern and eastern Europe.