It is challenging to design and build tools to support the energy transition of cities. Moreover, together with the tools and methods TRANSFORM developed, it is far from easy to change an existing city to low-carbon if it comes to energy use and production. The team learned that energy transformation is a complex process with many stakeholders, huge financial investments, and legal, political, societal, organisational constraints. Transformation influences the life of citizens, politicians and businesses.

Within the TRANSFORM project, an online integrated urban energy planning tool, the Decision Support Environment (DSE) was developed, which supports cities by providing quantitative insights on possible sustainability measures that can be taken and implemented.

The SmartEnCity project has developed a citizen engagement plan, taking into consideration the local conditions of each lighthouse city. As part of this, a qualitative research has been developed to map the citizen engagement reality of Vitoria Gasteiz, which is called the Citizen Engagement Strategy Model. The purpose of this model is to create a frame that can be useful for cities that are developing citizen engagement strategies involving the offer of innovative services and products.

In the main, this project has been able to move forward relatively smoothly, running well within the government’s existing administrative and financial standards. However, some of the challenges noted have been specifically around the size and impact of such a project on organisational resources, as well as the style of language used and the requirements for partners to understand a varying level of complex and specialised knowledge, together with the unique Horizon 2020 processes, which not all project colleagues are automatically aware of.

An interesting outcome of the introduction of the electric bus scheme has been the impact on the working relationship between the bus drivers. It seems that the capacity for each vehicle to be driven in a way that can maximise emission savings has stimulated a healthy and positive competition between drivers to see which of them can drive the most efficiently and save the most energy. This has been good for team building and employee relationships.

Electric vehicles were exempt from registration fees in Denmark until 31 December 2015. The Government announced the gradual introduction of the registration fee over 5 years, after which point electric vehicles would be subjected to the same fees as conventional combustion engine vehicles. The introduction of this fee reduced the sales of electric vehicles markedly. According to Insero news, the number sold in 2016 equalled only 3 % of all vehicle sales.

A national regulatory change announced in 2016 forced the cancellation of the programme where electricity from photovoltaics sold to the grid received a guaranteed price per kWh rather than the fluctuating spot market price. Options that may become more popular in the future are with the energy service companies (ESCOs) that take over the investments related to energy efficiency intervention. In exchange, they receive monthly payments from the energy cost savings., guaranteed  for a set period of time.

The project has a stakeholder engagement plan that includes how to and when to communicate what to whom. There is no matrix showing the importance/level of influence of each stakeholder, which is something that should be done for future projects. The project team tried to limit the number of people contacting each stakeholder so that time wouldn’t need to be spent bringing SmartEnCity partners up to date on every occasion when they communicated with each other.

The SmartEnCity team in Tartu has developed a stakeholder engagement plan and especially in the refurbishing phase of the pilot area the focus of communication and engagement strategy is on the participation of the housing associations and residents belonging to these associations. All the buildings in the renovated district are privately owned and the collective decision by the owners is required for the renovation to take place. The SmartEnCity project supports this process but the final decision has to be made by the representative non-governmental organisation of the private owners.

Since REMOURBAN is focused on high performance, the interventions were planned to reach the expected over-standard performances. Although the equipment and materials have been chosen with consideration for the best value for money, it can be said that there would be a higher return on investment if the project did not have certain high-performance goals.

REMOURBAN has a specific task on citizen engagement. Through this deliverable, the relevant stakeholders that would be influenced by the project measures and the time and manner of their engagement have been noted. The university has carried out several inquiries and questionnaires regarding student evaluation of the proposed cycle routes and their usage.

The main financial risk was the uncertainty surrounding the district owners signing the contracts with the companies awarded the project work.

The project In Valladolid has crafted a stakeholder engagement that maps the different stakeholders and plans the communication and dissemination activities tailored to each group during the different phases of the project.

The engagement activities include the distribution of a special informational leaflet among the tenants to raise the awareness of the financial and environmental benefits of the project, launch of a local website with a frequently asked questions section, and direct email and phone communication line with the project partners.

A predesigned administrative procedure for installing a charging station does not exist. Therefore, the acquisition of permission takes longer, there is insecurity and a strong need for cooperation with relevant actors.

A major focus of the project lies on the integration of the residents, and respectively the affected people of the target area in the district of Simmering. They can participate in different ways during the co-creation process, which accompanies the realisation projects. Quite a few engagement and co-creation activities took place, among which:

• Low-energy districts - the tenants of the refurbishment building Lorystraße can decide about the colour of the façade and the balconies, as well as about the design of the community space and the garden.

Smart city projects normally implement relatively new technologies, thus increasing the financial risk due to the uncertainty of their success or impact. This sometimes makes it difficult to find the time and proper resources necessary to implement, test, launch and evaluate the results of these technologies.

The district heating installation is part of a major urban development in the neighbourhood, and obtaining the public and private funding to start the urban development was complicated. However, this initial financial risk has been overcome.

The Nottingham project coordination process has included the establishment of monthly team meetings, engaging with all local partners working within the project across all the various strands. It has been noted how important it is to ensure good communication and overall project understanding.

Including citizens in the early stages of development is key and is carried out through variety of actions – setting up the so called House of the project, organising labs, providing the opportunity to participate in the prototyping. On one hand, this focuses on the involvement of local inhabitants (private groups of owners) in the eco refurbishment of their buildings. On the other, the inhabitants and the people working in the neighbourhood are engaged in the management of their energy consumption by means of data collection.