There is a lot for everyone to learn, especially when it comes to the energy and heat transition: What does “getting away from oil and gas” mean in practical terms? How do heat pumps work and which variant is the most suitable for the house in question? What does geothermal energy mean? What are the different forms of biomass heating systems?

The LOCALISED partner ÖGUT’s public on-site renovation consultations start with a specific building and expand the individual consultation to include a broader dialogue with community leaders and interested citizens. In doing so, they contribute to initiating learning communities for renovation and decarbonization within communities. The public on-site renovation consultations are a low-threshold and cost-effective form of participation at the local level, which effectively accelerates the energy and heat transition.

After events in communities in Upper Austria and Lower Austria, renovation dialogues will take place in autumn 2023 in locations such as Velden (Carinthia) and Hart bei Graz (Styria).

The guiding topic of the 6th European Climate Change Adaptation Conference was to accelerate the shift from climate science to climate adaptation action. Hosted by JPI Climate and the Magica Project, 450 researchers and practitioners from different European countries assembled at Dublin Castle for two days of project presentations, panel discussions, and multiple informal exchanges about how to do so.

For the LOCALISED project, Tobias Gralke from the Climate Media Factory and Gerard Martínez Görbig from the University of Twente presented insights into some of their current work. While Gerard brought a poster about the adaptation measures database which the Decarbonisation Profiler will be built upon, Tobias gave a talk about the emergence and design of narratives for local and participatory climate politics. The failed “Berlin 2030 Klimaneutral” referendum and the “European Green Capital” campaign in Vitoria-Gasteiz were used as case studies to discuss what makes narratives transformative and how these narratives (don’t) become local practices. The work on these questions will continue in the project’s Task 6.3 “Narratives and new roles for active EU citizens”. There it will inform the Decarbonisation Profiler’s attempt to help its users tell meaningful stories about their local climate futures – and to bring these futures into being.

Finally, particularly relevant for the project were the conference’s other sessions about decision-making platforms and the engagement of stakeholders and citizens. Many of the questions and assumptions that the LOCALISED project works with proved to be of high and urgent relevance for other projects and adopters as well: How exactly do we move beyond mere data presentation towards supporting meaningful and wise decision-making? How can local knowledge be demystified and operationalized for climate adaptation action? And, given the myriad of climate adaptation platforms across Europe, how do we ensure that the services we create will have a lasting impact and use value for our stakeholders?

The next ECCA Conference will take place in 2025 in Italy, organized by our project partner CMCC. We already look forward to being a part of it and presenting the final outcomes of the LOCALISED project!

On the 15th and 16th of June, the LOCALISED consortium met in Gdansk for a project partner meeting to present on-going activities, discuss features and the co-design process for the Decarbonisation Profiler and Net-Zero business consultant tools and chart the course for the future of the project. 

The primary objective of the meeting was to ensure all LOCALISED partners were on the same page regarding the project’s progress and to determine the next crucial steps. Each partner presented updates on their respective Work Packages and tasks, offering insights into achievements thus far and sharing plans for future actions. The meeting served to establish upcoming milestones and identify strategies for effectively developing the LOCALISED tools and engaging stakeholders. Discussions took place in particular on quantifying the impacts of climate mitigation and adaptation measures and instruments on social equity and fairness and how to include it in the planned tools. Another focus was on collecting project findings so far and how to make them known to the project audiences, e.g. the scientific community and political actors at different levels. Indeed, some bilateral groups facilitated an exchange of knowledge and experiences, enabling the different partners to capitalize on collective expertise. 

While the meeting was an occasion for intense discussions and planning, it also provided an opportunity for LOCALISED members to forge connections and strengthen cooperation. In addition to the productive sessions, the partners indulged in city sightseeing of Gdansk. These moments of leisure, culminating in a delightful dinner, created a relaxed and interactive environment where participants could interact on a personal level.

The meeting was made possible thanks to the LOCALISED partners Metropolitan Area Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot and the Institute of Fluid-flow Machinery of the Polish Academy of Science.

Figure 1 – Spatial disaggregation of CO2 emissions from the residential sector. These emissions are distributed proportional to population numbers. Please note that the values here are strictly exemplary.

LOCALISED aims to provide climate action plans at a community-relevant, local administration decision scale for all the EU27 countries. As a result, a major part of the work carried out within the project involves spatial disaggregation of country-level decarbonisation trajectories to a regional level.

In a nutshell, spatial disaggregation methods aid in increasing the spatial resolution of the data. These methods employ proxy data, available at a fine resolution, to distribute the data available at a coarser resolution. A simple example of this process is shown in Figure 1. Here, the  emissions from the residential sector are spatially disaggregated based on population numbers.

Figure 2 – Workflow involved in the disaggregation of decarbonisation trajectories and provision of all the data collected in the process through the LOCALISED data-sharing platform.

The decarbonisation trajectories [1] involve several attributes on various themes such as sectoral emissions, electricity and heat generation, sectoral electricity and heat demand, etc. The spatial disaggregation of the plethora of attributes requires collection of spatially highly resolved data on various themes such as demography, local climate conditions, infrastructure status, road and rail networks, landscape features, etc. Moreover, this data is required for all the EU27 countries.

A one-stop, open-source database that provides data at a fine spatial resolution of NUTS3 [2] or finer Local Administrative Unit (LAU) [3] resolution for all the EU27 countries is required to spatially disaggregate the decarbonisation trajectories.

Due to lack of such a database, we are building our own. To that end, we collect, process, and curate data from different public databases at NUTS3, and where possible, LAU spatial level. We plan to make this database openly accessible via our data-sharing platform. What’s more, the spatially disaggregated decarbonization trajectories will also be published via this platform. Figure 2 shows the entire workflow leading up to the data-sharing platform.

We believe that the data-sharing platform will be indispensable to energy system modelers, researchers focusing on mitigation and adaptation measures at a regional scale and local administrations, across the EU.

A pilot version of the LOCALISED data-sharing platform is planned to be released to the public in July 2023. An update regarding the access and usage of the platform will follow soon.

References:

[1] https://www.localised-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/LOCALISED_D2.1_Decarbonisation_scenarios.pdf

[2] NUTS – GISCO – Eurostat (2021). NUTS – GISCO – Eurostat, 2021 [Dataset]. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/administra-tive-units-statistical-units/nuts (accessed Nov. 23, 2022).

[3] GISCO – Eurostat, “LAU – GISCO – Eurostat,” 2020. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/administrative-units-statistical-units/lau (accessed Nov. 23, 2022).