SMARTER TOGETHER’s overarching vision is to find the right balance between smart technologies and organizational/ governance dimensions in order to deliver smart and inclusive solutions and to improve citizen’s quality of life. SMARTER TOGETHER gather the European Lighthouse cities Lyon, Munich, Vienna, the Follower cities Santiago de Compostela, Sofia, Venice and Kyiv and Yokohama as observer cities bringing the perspective of East Europe and Asia. The cities are complemented by business partners from energy, mobility and ICT sectors, leading European research and academia organizations, european city network. From the various combinations of the different selected Light House areas, multiples opportunities to learn are offering. SMARTER TOGETHER delivers 5 clusters of co-created, smart and integrated solutions: (1) Living labs for citizen engagement, (2) District heating and RES for low energy districts, (3) Holistic refurbishment for low energy districts addressing public and private housing, (4) Smart Data management platform and smart services (5) E-mobility solutions for sustainable mobility. Expected results are: 1) >151,800 m2 of refurbished buildings, primarily housing estate with a 50-60 % average energy and CO2 reduction; 2) 14.6 MW of newly installed renewable capacity; 3) 10/15new e-mobility solutions for passengers and freight); 4) 1400 created jobs, 130 M€ investments, all deployed with support of integrated ICT solutions and in dialogue with the inhabitants. Large-scale replication will be prepared; 1) in the Lighthouse cities; 2) the Follower cities, which already selected their target area; 3) A Club of 15-20 cities, associate to intensify its roll-out, ensuring a broad geographical and climate coverage. Commercial exploitation is enhanced by the development of new business models for widespread use by the stakeholders. Contributions to open data are expected to create business opportunities as well as inputs to standardization work.

The overarching objective of the PATH2LC project is to support policy makers and public authorities at local level in the transition process towards a low carbon society. Through a holistic network approach, stakeholders in public authorities are linked among municipalities in order to enable peer-to-peer learning and increase the engagement in energy and climate transition. The network approach shall also accelerate the implementation of Sustainable Energy (and Climate) Action Plan (SE(C)AP) measures. The PATH2LC project will foster the exchange of existing knowledge and experiences among municipalities, enhance coordination among different administrative bodies within the municipalities and improve cooperation with local stakeholders and civil society. It will furthermore provide stakeholders in public authorities with the necessary planning and monitoring tools to implement transition roadmaps. The following five existing networks are the starting point of the project: UCSA - Joint Office for Environmental Sustainability (Italy), Sustainable City Network (Greece), OesteSustentável (Portugal), Cities Northern Netherlands (NL), Rhône Network (FR). They benefit from a well-established network process of the so-called learning energy efficiency networks (LEEN), supplemented with in-depth capacity building and support regarding heating and cooling topics. Due to the international composition of the networks, cross-country experiences can be shared. The project is accompanied by a socio-scientific evaluation in order to make the results transferable to other municipalities as well as by a dissemination strategy in order to make network activities visible.