Unless you are Romanian or familiar with Romania, the Transylvanian town of Alba-Iulia likely does not ring a bell. Home to less than 70,000 people, the town nevertheless holds a symbolic significance for Romanians, for it is the place where the country's regions declared their intention to unite in the aftermath of World War I.

Almost a century later, Alba-Iulia has preserved its historical significance, but its relevance has shifted to encompass other areas; foremost among them the municipality's efforts to develop the city in a smart, sustainable way. For the name of Alba-Iulia is increasingly recognisable in urban sustainability circles in Europe and beyond. Most recently, the town was listed by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) as one of the few municipalities in continental Europe to derive more than 70% of its energy from renewable sources.

Alba-Iulia's success with climate action at the local level is not a coincidence. A signatory of the Covenant of Mayors, the most prominent global alliance of municipalities and local governments dedicated to combating climate change, since 2010, Alba-Iulia has made painstaking efforts to benchmark energy consumption, and its environmental, social and economic development needs; to set climate and development goals; plan strategies and projects aligned with those goals; seek external expertise from institutions like the World Bank about its strategies and goals; apply for external financing for projects, when necessary; and engage with the private sector to carry them out. 

This well thought-out, painstaking process could sound laborious and unexciting to lay audiences, but is how climate action, be it adaptation or mitigation, needs to be carried out in practice at the local level in order for it to be effective. As Clara Grimes, communications officer at ICLEI- Local Governments for Sustainability explained in an interview with bne IntelliNews, "[local climate action] requires that municipalities change the way they work, that their different departments collaborate more and that their urban development plans have sustainability at their core. That is because climate change cannot be solved with one (or several) infrastructure projects; addressing it requires long-term thinking.” 

A concerted effort

Alba-Iulia is one of the over 7,400 municipalities and local governments around the world that have signed the Covenant of Mayors to date, thus publicly assuming their part of the responsibility to address climate change. In the aftermath of the 2015 Paris Agreement, a UN climate change accord signed in 2015 by most UN member countries (the exceptions are war-torn Syria and the US, which chose to withdraw in 2017), there has been an increase in attention paid to local action against climate change. For, while national and international accords and policies are important, carrying them out will require the involvement of actors at different levels of governance. 

Cities are quintessentially important to climate change efforts. Home to over half of the world's population (almost three-quarters in Europe), accounting for 80% of global GDP and over two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, cities are key to making sure that the global temperature rises of the past century slow down to avoid catastrophic ecosystem damage. Not only that, but local governments often have significant power of decision over projects under their jurisdiction, the ability to engage with the electorate and the private sector from a position of strength, the possibility to work with (and lobby) national governments, partake in numerous international climate initiatives and raise financing for projects. 

Cities also have a vested interest in mitigating the impact of climate change on their infrastructure and people, as phenomena like pollution, smog, the urban heat island effect, extreme weather events and sea-level rises are already beginning to affect them, and will continue to disproportionately impact urban areas.  

But the science — and practice — of urban climate action remains very much a work in progress, and many basic aspects of it, including a commonly accepted definition of a 'sustainable city' amongst practitioners, have yet to be developed. Because of the numerous differences among cities, devising universally applicable terms and strategies remains a challenge. That explains why we keep hearing terms like 'sustainable cities', 'sharing cities' and 'smart cities', but why we rarely hear experts elaborate on these terms in the mass media, to explain what they mean and the types of actions needed to accomplish them. (Some rule-of-thumb definitions are that 'sustainable cities' are those that pursue economic, social and environmental sustainability; 'smart cities' those that use technology to reduce inefficiencies, connect people and empower communities; and 'sharing cities' those that devise ways to share resources that are under-utilised or wasted, like cars, bikes, washing machines, and food.) 

In the case of Alba-Iulia, the municipality works with long-term integrated development strategies (the current one runs from 2014 to 2023), Maria Seemann, a public manager at the municipality, explained in an email to bne IntelliNews. In consultation with the World Bank, the town hall has prioritised a number of projects that support the umbrella strategy of turning the town into a smart, green municipality that is innovative and attractive for tourists. Amongst the priority projects for the period 2014-2020 are the restoration of several historical sites, improving the quality of vegetation in local parks, expanding and upgrading the street lighting system, the construction of bicycle paths and energy efficiency projects in public buildings, particularly in schools.     

Being sustainable pays off, according to Seemann, for a town the size of Alba-Iulia can save hundreds of thousands of euros every year from revising its street lighting network to remove inefficiencies and by replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs. Moreover, financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects is available under various EU financing schemes such as Horizon 2020 and from multilateral lenders. While such financing is normally competitive, the towns and cities that secure it can benefit from grants and low-interest loans for climate-friendly projects, meaning that the returns on investment for municipal energy projects can be sizeable.

Case in point, Alba-Iulia has secured €2mn in grants from the EU to install 1,714 photovoltaic panels on the rooftops of four public buildings, and is expecting to save between €85,000 and €90,000 per year in energy costs thanks to this project. The municipality prides itself on being one of the most efficient in Romania at attracting EU funding, having secured over €200mn for various development projects in the last decade. 

Not only that, but Alba-Iulia has partnered with several technology companies like mobile telecoms company Orange Romania, IT giant Microsoft and others to develop smart city solutions. Thus, starting this year, Alba-Iulia will offer visitors and residents the opportunity to connect to WiFi hotspots in public places and on public transport and to run e-errands on the municipality's website; will optimise the flow of traffic and pedestrians using a pioneering City Analytics software; will monitor air quality using another intelligent solution, the uRadMonitor; will manage its water and energy utilities using online platforms; and will monitor its energy consumption through the use of smart metres, sensors, network analysers and data concentrators. 

What is even smarter about the Alba-Iulia Smart City project, according to Seemann, is the fact that the private contractors cover the costs of the project. "By partnering up with us, we are offering private companies the opportunity to use the city as an 'urban show window' where they can showcase their sustainable development solutions. Since 2018 is the centennial of Romanian unity, our town will receive visits from thousands of mayors from around the country and tourists from Romania and abroad," she explains. Despite demanding that contractors cover the cost of smart city solutions, the city has not been short of private sector interest, for in addition to the above-mentioned ones, Alba-Iulia is also working with Siemens on making the business case for smart city infrastructure, with Netherlands-based Philips and with local and international tech startups like WhiteCityCode and UradMonitor. 

But while the municipality has made great progress toward its sustainable development goals, the CDP report cited in the beginning of this article is inaccurate, according to Seemann. Alba-Iulia does not derive 70% of its energy needs from renewable sources yet; rather, the report comprises renewable energy projects that are in the plans and in the works at the moment, she adds. The inadvertent mistake in this report, which is authored by one of the most respected environmental reporting organisations in the world, reveals another challenge to understanding urban sustainability transitions — namely, accurate data collection. 

Laggards at climate change action?

The type of holistic sustainable development strategy that Alba-Iulia is pursuing is also the type of strategy that organisations like ICLEI recommend cities undertake. An umbrella organisation that brings together local officials and connects them to researchers and funding, ICLEI has launched and initiated a series of urban sustainability projects in recent years that have included Central and Eastern European (CEE) cities. 

CEE cities' stance on climate change is particularly relevant at the moment, seeing as the national governments of Estonia and Bulgaria have disappointed recently with their weak stances on climate change while holding the rotating presidency of the EU Council, and given that the 24th edition of the UN's annual Conference of Parties (COP) climate change conference will be returning to Poland this year (COP14 and COP19 were held in Poznan and Warsaw respectively; COP24 will take place in Katowice). 

But despite the fact that CEE municipal authorities have to contend with specific, region-wide challenges like demographic decline, even in cities, and a chronic lack of funding, they are not laggards in the area of climate change, Grimes believes. "We are seeing a bigger trend of cities in CEE partnering up with other cities in the region and across Europe to combat the common challenge of climate change, which knows no borders," she says. 

Grimes is also optimistic about the amount of leverage that municipal authorities have over climate change action in their countries. "The cities that we work with are all very ambitious about climate change action. And cooperating with other cities from around the world empowers municipal officials to have more leverage at home, regardless of the position that their national governments adopt on climate change," she opines. In addition, in so doing, they learn about best practices that are being implemented or tested elsewhere and broker partnerships that could enable them to save time, money, resources and energy. 

A few of the noteworthy recent climate partnerships and projects that CEE cities have undertaken are RESIN, an EU-funded initiative that aims to develop urban climate adaptation tools based on the case studies of Bratislava and Manchester; a project aimed at improving the performance of district heating networks in Ljubliana, Zagreb and Belgrade; and the city of Burgas in Bulgaria, which, like Alba-Iulia in Romania, has been successful at attracting foreign funding for projects related to clean energy and sustainability, and which installed a water cool mist system in its renovated central square in 2015 in order to combat extreme heat during the summers.

Municipal officials from Bratislava and Manchester talk about RESIN, an EU-funded project to develop tools for cities to adapt to the effects of climate change, as well as about the impact of climate change on their cities. 

Cleaning up Zabrze

The Polish town of Zabrze is home to slightly under 200,000 people and is located in the vicinity of Katowice, this year's COP host. Like many towns and cities in Poland and Europe, Zabrze has a long-standing problem with air pollution and smog. Due to the fact that coal accounts for over 80% of Poland's power generation, Polish cities experience high concentrations of harmful chemicals, like nitrous oxides and particulate matter. 

But, under the administration of mayor Malgorzata Manka-Szulik, who took office in 2006, Zabrze has been hard at work to solve air pollution and become as sustainable as possible given Poland's broader climate change policies. In an email to bne IntelliNews, Manka-Szulik detailed some of the recent climate-change related projects on which the municipality has been working. 

"In the autumn of 2017, the city received over PLN15mn (€3.5mn) in EU funding for the development of green areas and the modernisation of the rainwater drainage system. In February, we received another PLN4mn from the Voivodeship Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management – this time for the modernisation of heat sources. We also secured PLN7mn in EU funding to organise and develop 21 urban green areas …” 

In the area of energy, which has traditionally been a thorny issue for Poland and its cities, Zabrze has been working to make its public buildings more energy efficient, and has secured PLN70.8mn in EU funding for this purpose, with which it has retrofitted 77 buildings. The municipality applied for an additional PLN7.5mn in 2017, which it wants to spend on energy audits and retrofits on another seven buildings. Furthermore, the city hall has been working together with the population to make residential buildings more energy efficient. Thus far, it has co-sponsored 3,700 investments in residential energy efficiency, thanks to financing from the local voivodeship (regional) fund. 

Raising money for projects, however, is one of Zabrze's main challenges, according to Manka-Szulik. "So far, we have carried out projects worth PLN200mn to reduce pollutants in the city. However, we are currently looking to raise an additional PLN60mn for the revitalisation of the Zandka district in Zabrze, and raising funds is certainly one of the challenges we face," she adds. 

But despite such challenges, Zabrze will continue to work together with national and international partners to solve the city's air pollution problem and to promote sustainable development looking ahead. At the moment, the city is part of a scheme launched by the national environment ministry to gauge the sensitivity to climate change amongst Poland's 44 largest cities, which, according to the mayor, "is the only one of this scale in Europe at the moment." 

A distinct advantage 

Effectively deploying climate adaptation projects and strategies at the local level require, like any other project, well-functioning institutions. And a brief consultation of rankings like Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index will quickly reveal that CEE countries remain markedly more corrupt, at all levels of governance, compared to other regions in Europe.  

Furthermore, since much of the financing for climate change and smart city programmes comes from the EU and multilateral lenders that require good governance, differentiating oneself for good governance is something that CEE cities are increasingly looking to do, according to Martin Neureiter, CEO of the Vienna-based consultancy CSR Company. 

One way to do that, according to Neureiter, is to become certified in ISO 37,001, the International Organisation for Standardisation's anti-bribery standard. Like all ISO standards, 37,001 can be costly and time consuming to adhere to, but it can help differentiate cities, particularly in countries known for being corrupt, such as Romania and Bulgaria. Neureiter, who counsels private and state actors about sustainability in CEE, has noticed an increase in the interest in ISO 37,001 amongst municipalities in the region, he told bne IntelliNews, and is now discussing the possibility of advising one of the large cities in Romania on becoming compliant with the standard. 

It is therefore not unthinkable that CEE cities' drive to become more sustainable will bring about benefits that go beyond better environment and improved health for citizens, benefits that could include tackling long-standing problems like poor governance and corruption.