Cross KIC event: Innovation Hub North and Climate KIC | Climate Emergency

Cities across the world – and also in EIT Urban Mobility – have ambitious Climate Action Plans.

The decarbonisation of the transport sector is an important part of this, since the transport sector contributes to a significant proportion of CO2 emissions in cities (about a third). But the transport sector has proven to be stubborn to decarbonise. While city governments have worked hard in recent years to decarbonise public transport fleets (with an exponential growth of electric buses in city fleets), the public transport sector’s contribution to global emissions was already extremely low. A huge growth in e-commerce (spurred by the Covid19 pandemic), has allowed people to access more goods without travelling to shops, but this has led to increased road freight transport that is highly fossil-fuel dependent, and it is expected that reduced commuting travel will be replaced by increased leisure trips.

There is a growth in shared services other than public transport, but the contribution to reduced emissions is not certain. At EIT Urban Mobility, our mission is to accelerate change towards a sustainable model of urban mobility for liveable urban spaces, and eventually achieving three societal impact goals: ·

• Improved quality of life in cities;
• Mitigation of and adaptation to climate change;
• Job creation and strengthening of the European urban mobility sector.

Therefore, addressing the climate emergency is at the heart of what we want to achieve.   Together with EIT Climate KIC we will spark a discussion on what our community is doing to address the climate emergency, but also what EIT Urban Mobility and Climate KIC can do to support this work. Collaboration is at the centre of tackling the climate emergency, but how can our activities address this, and can it ever be acceptable for us to do all of this international travel if we are serious about tackling transport decarbonisation?

During this event, we will discuss how we can have an impact:

• Exchange among participants and IH North partners on the efforts and progress to achieving transport decarbonisation (mitigation) as well as actions for climate change adaptation.
• Discuss how EIT Urban Mobility, particularly IH North can support this work and what concrete actions can be done by the organisation and community.

Where: BLOXHUB, Copenhagen & online