The Competence Centre is centred on research and innovation, by helping cities to make the best use of existing EU programmes and to address their funding and financing gaps. The CC is designed as a Hub for innovation, setting an RDI excellence flag and acting as support for cities into successfully reaching the EU Climate Mission milestones, funding opportunities and Key Performance Indicators.

Our Competence Centre promotes system innovation across the value chain of city investment, targeting multiple sectors such as governance, transport, energy, construction, and recycling, with support from powerful digital technologies. Cities requires a shift in regulations, approaches and instruments combined with the willingness to go beyond existing schemes and habits. It requires an attitude change towards practical implementation that includes concerns of people and stakeholders working together: citizens, local governments, central and regional governments, and European institutions. Following the vision of creating a safe, liveable, and lovable living space, urban neighbourhoods offer a good opportunity to implement and validate new ideas and innovative concepts. This is why our CC focuses on both static (i.e., city infrastructure) and dynamic (i.e. people, businesses) components of the city.

The Centre’s Core Consortium includes strategic partners directly connected to Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Suceava, and others.

The structure of the consortium fosters a nucleus of excellence focused on helping cities reach Net Zero through governance and technology. Geographically, partners are well connected with the three cities selected by 100 EU Cities (Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Suceava), and to other cities.

National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest (UNSTPB), the Coordinator, is the largest technical university in Romania. Scientific research is an essential activity of UPB, the value of the results obtained at national and international levels being recognized and strategically oriented towards high development areas (e.g., information and communication technology, innovative products and processes)

UPB and UTCN are the biggest two technical universities in Romania, both with a large experience in RDI projects on the topics. UTCB is the university forming specialists in Smart Building and Environments. USV is the university forming specialists for solving Societal needs, while ICI is the RDI national institute for Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity in Romania. UPB has worked previously with ICI, UTCN, BEIA, ICOR, ORO in many Smart City projects, UTCN the same with DATACOR, HOLISUN, BOSCH (as part of Cluster IT), USV with UTCN and BTGR. Companies work on sustainable energy/lighting, others on green buildings, smart mobility, circular economy, and are all top actors on Smart Cities tech., willing to extend their portfolio with a dedicated Climate Neutrality technology focus. All (SME and large) companies in Consortium have previously implemented Smart City projects in Romania. ORO implemented the Smart Cities solutions in Alba-Iulia (then declared the top city in terms of digitalization in Romania), and BOSCH with a large history of Smart City projects (from smart traffic lights to smart lightning and autonomous vehicles). The Cluj IT cluster (DATACOR) is part of the consortium. We have companies with a large expertise in IoT and environmental monitoring (BEIA runs projects for the Ministry of Environment for carbon emission estimation), in Governance and Technology (HOLISUN), smart mobility (ICOS runs the Smart Hub), or smart buildings (BTGR).