U_CAN – Ukraine towards Carbon Neutrality
Program: Horizon Europe
Lead: WISSENSARCHITEKUR - Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture (TU Dresden)
Runtime: 2024 - 2028
Team: Jörg Noennig; Swati Kulashri; Paul Stadelhofer; Anja Jannack
Partners: City of Dresden; DIN Institute for Standardization; European Citizen Science Association... (List of partner network)
The U_CAN project, funded by Horizon Europe and led by WISSENSARCHITEKTUR - Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture, seeks to support Ukrainian cities on their path toward climate neutrality.
Aligned with the European Green Deal (EGD) and the EU's mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities (CNSC), the project aims to facilitate a practical bottom-up approach for Ukrainian municipalities to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, this project offers a comprehensive framework to foster climate resilience and sustainable urban development in Ukrainian cities through international cooperation, capacity-building, and knowledge transfer.
Key Objectives and Strategy: U_CAN is designed around five core objectives.
- It aims to support Ukrainian cities in developing context-specific climate strategies, which will lead to the formation of a pioneering network of stakeholders working towards climate neutrality.
- It focuses on identifying key sectors in Ukraine for climate transitioning, such as industrial decarbonization, energy transition, and nature-based solutions, to provide targeted recommendations and standards.
- It facilitates twinning activities between CNSC Mission Cities and Ukrainian cities to promote the exchange of best practices, fostering long-term partnerships and enabling Ukrainian cities to leverage European expertise in climate action.
- It centers on implementing localized pilot initiatives that demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of climate-neutral measures, enabling replication and knowledge exchange across Ukraine.
- The final objective is to build awareness and disseminate the project's results across a broader range of Ukrainian cities, ensuring long-term impacts and alignment with the EGD.
Methodology and Implementation: The project begins with a core group of eight Ukrainian cities—Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Khmelnytskyi—working in collaboration with Dresden as a CNSC Mission City and various NGOs, research institutions, and European partners.
U_CAN employs a practical and participatory approach, combining stakeholder co-creation, citizen science, and targeted training activities to ensure a value-based, needs-oriented strategy that aligns with both European climate standards and the unique socio-political context of Ukraine.
A crucial aspect of the project involves establishing twinning relationships between Ukrainian cities and their European counterparts. This step-by-step synergy-building process includes vision workshops, roadmapping, and stakeholder co-creation sessions. Through these activities, European and Ukrainian cities co-develop use cases and pilot implementation measures for climate mitigation and adaptation, supported by extensive dissemination and exploitation plans.
These plans are spearheaded by European and Ukrainian umbrella organizations, standardization initiatives, and local and national representatives, ensuring effective communication and long-term integration of climate strategies.
Expected Outcomes and Broader Impact: By facilitating knowledge transfer, institutional networking, and innovation management, U_CAN aims to enable participating Ukrainian cities to develop well-defined, context-specific climate strategies and improve their capacities for climate mitigation.
The project's success is expected to result in the establishment of model “pilot cities” in Ukraine that can serve as examples for the rest of the country. These cities will align their policies with the EGD and CNSC missions, driving a broader pan-Ukrainian initiative toward climate neutrality.
Through international partnerships and a robust network of European and Ukrainian stakeholders, U_CAN stands as a significant step in integrating Ukrainian cities into the collective European vision for a climate-neutral future, fostering resilience, sustainability, and hope for a better future in Ukraine.
Further Informations (english and ukrainian):
Official website of the U_CAN project
U_CAN on LinkedIn
U_CAN on Facebook