Specific Grant Agreement to the FPA to reinforce the operations of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform

ECT2 will expand the existing portfolio of whole-city transformation activities and interventions by focusing on implementation barriers shared by cities across the Mission. The core shift introduced in this call is a move away from broad, domain-based support towards a more focused model that organises action around clearly defined systemic barriers and bottlenecks . To this end, ECT2 is organised around six challenge areas which represent critical city-wide implementation barriers that currently prevent cities from translating Climate City Contract ambitions into replicable and scalable outcomes. The challenge areas are: Place-based heating and cooling Nature Based Solutions at city scale Urban energy systems City finance innovation for climate neutrality Large-scale building retrofits and renovations Decarbonising urban mobility and logistics All applicants must: Choose the challenge area that resonates most and anchor the rationale for intervention within this area. Within their chosen challenge area, formulate an adequate context-specific impact pathway following the impact framework. While the impact pathway describes how the proposed intervention is expected to create change, the Impact Framework provides the progression from problem to impact and the structure for how that change will be monitored, evidenced and reported. Across all challenge areas, ECT2 aims to enable cities to move from constrained implementation to durable, city-wide transformation by combining activities which remove diagnosed systemic blockers and accelerate progress to climate neutrality. To this end, the programme aims to ensure that Mission Cities can: Deploy and scale climate‑neutral solutions by addressing institutional, policy, financial, governance, market or social bottlenecks that limit uptake or speed. Translate research, innovation and evidence into operational policy and delivery systems, ensuring that scientific and technical knowledge is effectively embedded into city decision‑making. Strengthen city capacities and capabilities so that climate‑neutral delivery becomes business‑as‑usual, independent of individual champions or one‑off projects. Cover a broad range of levers for change (policy, green technology, finance, governance, behavioural change, social innovation, multi-actor collaboration, procurement, new business models as circular economy, etc.) Enable collaborative governance and citizen engagement models that support systemic, cross‑sectoral climate action and deliver just transition outcomes. The selection of proposals will result in multiple implementation-enabling innovations focussing on resolving key implementation challenges. Interventions will work individually and in combinations/clusters to generate resolutions for shared barriers. Activities eligible for funding are: Interventions should consist of the following activities to be eligible for funding: Pioneering Activities: Activities that adapt, test or deploy innovative or enabling solutions at city level. Systemic, Science‑based Innovative Initiatives : Activities that strengthen the connection between research, evidence and city delivery. Capacity and capability‑building activities: Activities that establish new knowledge, skills and institutional competence within city administrations and key local actors. Collaborative governance and community‑building activities: Activities that build more collaborative, inclusive and systemic governance arrangements. Please note: proposed interventions may cover several or all of these descriptions of eligible activities – this list is intended to allow for flexibility in proposing interventions, rather than limiting proposed interventions to any one eligible activity alone. Applicants will be requested at the point of submitting a proposal to describe and declare the links between their proposed interventions and the eligible activities as listed above. For more information please refer to the Call Guidelines, which provide information on the aim, scope, and approach of the call and clarify how to submit a proposal, budget requirements, and the review mechanism and decision-making process.