20 June 2023
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
Cork City Council has joined seven European partners in an exciting new project to help reach our target of being a carbon-neutral city by 2030.
Through the European Green deal, the EU set ambitious targets to decarbonise transport. The European Environmental Agency (EEA) estimates that road traffic constitutes the highest proportion of overall transport emissions. In 2019, it emitted 72% of all domestic and international transport Green House Gases (GHGs), and 23% of the EU’s transport GHG emissions come from urban areas. In Cork city, petrol and diesel vehicles are responsible for 29% of our GHG emissions.
In March 2023, the Zero Carbon Infrastructure (ZCI) project began, to help reach our targets for reducing these emissions. Financed by the Interreg Europe programme, this four-year project sets an ambitious goal to support eight cities and regions across Europe in their efforts to develop green transport and zero-carbon infrastructure for their territories.
To achieve that goal, the partners will cooperate, identify and test practical solutions to overcome the challenges we are facing. Led by the County administrative board of Kronoberg (Sweden) and with support from the Erasmus Centre for Urban, Port and Transport Economics (The Netherlands), Cork City Council will explore solutions for:
- Private electric-vehicles charging infrastructure;
- Sustainable urban logistics;
- The business model of sustainable urban mobility – incentives that build customer demand for decarbonised transport solutions;
- Transition to zero-carbon mobility – public acceptance and communication.
Project activities will support the partners to:
- Identify and share good practices to address the key problems;
- Build capacity through training and knowledge-transfer;
- Improve relevant policy instruments to provide the necessary infrastructure and create market confidence.
The ZCI project has a total budget of € 2,085,629, with €1,650,049 provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The consortium consists of eight project partners and one advisory partner from:
- County administrative board of Kronoberg, Sweden – Lead Partner
- Kainuu Regional Council, Finland
- Business support centre Ltd, Kranj, Slovenia
- Burgas Municipality, Bulgaria
- Navarra Government – General Directorate on Industry, Energy and Strategic Projects, Spain
- Cork City Council, Ireland
- City of Mechelen, Belgium
- City of Parma, Italy
- Erasmus Centre for Urban, Port and Transport Economics BV, Netherlands
For more information about project objectives, activities and expected results you can visit the project website https://interregeurope.eu/zci
