Leading cities around the world are searching for innovative solutions to the major sustainability challenges they face, ranging from adapting to the effects of climate change, to providing their citizens with low carbon energy, waste, water and mobility options. However, many cities face procurement and conflict-ofinterest challenges when working directly with the private sector.
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), the Danish cleantech cluster CLEAN, and the International Cleantech Network (ICN) have launched the City Solutions Platform (CSP) as a way to support early engagement between cities and the private sector to accelerate the deployment of climate solutions. The CSP will run for a period of 2 years and is made possible by the generous support of Realdania and industry partners Danfoss, Hitachi, and RTI.
By facilitating early engagement between cities and solution providers, the City Solutions Platform aims to deliver the following:
- Build a platform for public and private entities to work together to develop implementable city solutions on the global stage;
- Create an inventory of appropriate engagement models according to specific city contexts and procurement rules and regulations;
- Provide opportunities for greater international visibility of the innovative sustainable solutions developed by the participating cities;
- Build shared understanding of the nature of the problems faced by cities, and the means available to the city to solve them, and the potential for climate action;
- Develop innovative best-practice solutions for megacities that can be replicated across the network of C40 cities;
- Act as a catalyst for deeper partnerships between global cities and leading sustainable solutions providers.
CITY SELECTION
The City Solutions Platform team is now seeking expressions of interest from cities to participate in the project. Interested cities are asked to define a concrete challenge and associated project related to the following topic areas.
- Adaption and water
- Waste management
- Energy
- Transportation
- Urban Planning and development
Interested cities will be invited to submit a formal expression of interest to participate in the City Solutions Platform as the first step of the selection process. A series of criteria will be applied to the inventory of potential cities to arrive at a shortlist of 4-6 cities to participate in the City Solutions Platform. Cities will be selected based on the following:
- Have articulated the specific challenge they wish to resolve, the means available to address it, and have an intention to move to tender stage within the project timeframe;
- Are looking for innovative solutions and are willing to consider a wide range of options to address the challenge identified • Are open to different procurement models;
- The challenge covers one of the 5 challenge topic areas;
- The challenge has a high potential for replicability/scalability across other C40 cities.