Three years after the EBRD’s flagship urban sustainability programme’s last in-person annual gathering in London, EBRD Green Cities brings together its network of City leaders from central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, for its 2022 Annual Conference.
This year’s EBRD Green Cities Annual Conference, held in Vienna on Thursday and Friday, will discuss how best to tackle urban climate challenges, with a strong focus on energy resilience, and securing a better, more sustainable and resilient future for cities and their residents. It will highlight the latest trends in financing green cities, focusing on the role cities and the private sector play in becoming energy resilient
“The need to accelerate the energy transition to build resilient and sustainable energy systems is ever more relevant in the context of the current energy crisis. Cities play a key role in setting policy, implementing clean energy projects and encouraging community initiative sthat support a more resilient, more secure and more affordable supply of energy,” said the EBRD’s Managing Director, Sustainable Infrastructure Group, Nandita Parshad.
“Resilient cities are better at absorbing the impact of economic, environmental and social hazards, and promoting well-being and inclusive and sustainable growth. Let’s also not forget that 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from cities, making them critical to ‘making green a reality’ and tackling the climate emergency. We will be continuing this message at COP27, the global climate summit, in a few weeks,” said Harry Boyd-Carpenter, EBRD Managing Director for Climate Strategy and Delivery.
The €5 billion plus programme helps cities to identify and find solutions, through investments and policy actions, to their sustainability and resilience needs and now with a network in excess of 50 cities, attracts significant funding from global climate funds and bilateral donors.
EBRD Green Cities supports member cities planning resilience strategies when faced with the Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020, with far more emphasis now being placed on risk and vulnerability assessments of citizens. More recently, Russia’s war on Ukraine has put cities across the EBRD regions under intense new pressures as millions of people are displaced and concerns about energy security come to the fore. EBRD Green Cities is already working with the City of Khmelnitskyi in western Ukraine, which is hosting many internally displaced people; the Bank stands ready to resume work with other city partners around Ukraine as soon as appropriate, including the 7 cities who are an important part of this network
Today’s most pressing urban challenges are addressed through a panel on strengthening the energy resilience of cities (20 October at 09:40 London time/10:40 Vienna time). This and a fireside chat on gender equal green cities (20 October at 11:00 London time/12:00 Vienna time) will be livestreamed, as will the conference opening (20 October at 09:15 London time/10:15 Vienna time) by Omar Al-Rawi, Member of the Vienna State Parliament and Municipal Council, and the EBRD’s Harry Boyd-Carpenter.
Later, the conference turns to breakout sessions on topics that will shape the future of resilient and sustainable urban planning: capital markets, digital, e-mobility and nature-based solutions. The EBRD Green Cities Annual Conference 2022 is supported by the Green Climate Fund and held in partnership with the City of Vienna.
