NetZeroCities ECT2: Enabling City Transformation 2
OpenDescription
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.
Beneficiary & submission
This Call for proposals, to support the drastic cut down of greenhouse gas emissions and the achievement of ‘climate neutrality’, invites Mission Cities from the “100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030” to undertake a 22‑month grant-supported programme centred around innovations that aim to overcome systemic implementation challenges in order to shift the dial from testing and experimentation to enable whole-city transformation and generate evidence fit for multi-city pan-European replication and adoption.
Reflecting the experiences and learnings from previous calls, the ECT2 call particularly seeks solutions that can translate enabling innovations into durable and policy-anchored delivery structures which will more likely generate sustained emissions reductions and EU-wide transformation.
For any information please contact ect@netzerocities.eu.
How to submit a proposal?
The applications are submitted online via the grant management platform:
If not already registered with the system**,** use this link to register.
If you have previously registered with the system (i.e. for applying to one of the Pilot Cities Programme calls): please use this link (and bookmark it!) to log-in.
If you do not remember your password, please use these password reset instructions
Guidance on how to submit your application can be found through the following links:
Please note that any proposals submitted outside of the proposal submission system will not be accepted; and that the system will be locked after the deadline. If you experience technical difficulties, please consult the system guidance. If you are still unable to resolve your system issue, follow the guidance on how to raise a support request via appropriate channels.
Who can apply?
Only local authorities or city administrations selected to be part of EU Mission for climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 (Mission Cities) are eligible to apply to and receive funding under this Call. For the avoidance of doubt, this call is addressed to designated Mission cities only and therefore these consortia may not include other city, district, or municipal authorities (i.e., ‘non-Mission’).
Please note: Administrations of a higher level of governance (i.e., a metropolis, region, or national/governmental departments) are eligible to participate as consortium partners where there is a formal governance link with the Mission City/cities leading or involved with the proposal. However, they do not count towards the eligible Mission City count (i.e., as related to the prescribed budget envelopes and the number present in the proposal) unless the metropolis or region is itself the Mission City, formally.
A group of Mission Cities (national or trans-national) may apply together in a consortium. However, in that case, one of the Mission Cities will have to be designated as the consortium leader for all administrative and process-related purposes. In the case of a group of cities applying together in one proposal, the size of the requested subgrant must follow the award amounts as stated at section 7.3 of the Call Guidelines.
Other organisations could also participate as members of a consortium led by a Mission City. These organisations could be, for example: research institutions, universities, SMEs, NGOs, associations, citizen groups or other relevant stakeholders involved in the implementation of the climate ambitions of a Mission City participating in the consortium.
For comprehensive information, including eligibility criteria, please consult the Call Guidelines.
Evaluation process
This Call will follow a three-stage evaluation and selection process, as described in chapter 9 of the call guidelines:
Stage 1: Eligibility check
The eligibility check stage entails the assessment of pass/fail requirements . Proposals must comply to the full set of eligibility criteria to proceed to Stage 2.
Proposals that fail the eligibility criteria will not be considered further in the process and applicants will be informed of the outcome.
Stage 2: Evaluation and scoring of eligible proposals
Scores will be made against the individual assessment criteria by at least two independent external experts, based on the submitted proposals. These experts are appointed from the pool of experts identified through an open call and contracted by the coordinator as part of the NetZeroCities project. The experts from this pool are deployed against all Calls for NetZeroCities sub-granting programmes. This evaluation is made using criteria grouped into the three main categories of: Mandate to Act, Capacity to Act, and Impact.
The detailed criteria for assessment of proposals for the SGA3-NZC ECT2 programme’s financial support to third parties scheme is defined in section 9.3 of the Call Guidelines.
Stage 3: Portfolio selection & Funding decision
The selection committee will select a portfolio of interventions through a dedicated selection process. The portfolio will be selected with the intention to support Mission Cities to overcome challenges to, experimenting with, and learning about, the implementation phase of the Cities Mission: i.e. enabling (Cities) Mission innovation implementation. It will also aim at complementing the existing cohorts of Enabling and Pilot Cities (i.e. inter-cohort portfolio) selected through previous calls, creating opportunities to exploit learning and outcomes of these diverse interventions over the course of the programme.
All submissions will be assessed fairly and transparently in the scope of the eligibility criteria, assessment of quality criteria, and strategic programme considerations as outlined in section 9.4 of the Call Guidelines. Decisions as to whether a proposal is accepted or rejected will be communicated as detailed in this document.
Further information
Funding
The funding will be allocated across three subgrant envelopes as follows:
- 500.000 EUR: proposals with a minimum of one Mission City plus at least one additional consortium partner.
- 1.000.000 EUR: proposals with a minimum of two distinct Mission Cities (i.e. formally selected as such), plus any additional consortium partners.
- 1.500.000 EUR: proposals with a minimum of three distinct Mission Cities (i.e. formally selected as such), plus any additional consortium partners.
Form of grant:
Financial support is provided in the form of a cascading grant based on, and reimbursed against, actual costs incurred and submitted in interim and final reporting.
Timeline:
- 31 August 2026, 12:00 CET – call launch
- 03 December 2026, 12:00 CET – call deadline
- 05 February 2027 – decision communication
- 19 February 2027 – publication of call outcomes and cities selected
- 01 April 2027 – programme starting date
- 31 January 2029 – programme ending date
Info Sessions:
- 15 September 2026 – Ambition and Approach for ECT2 (90’) REGISTER
- 29 September 2026 – Eligibility, Assessment Criteria and how to submit (90’) REGISTER
- 09 October 2026 – Impact Framework and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) (90’) REGISTER
Relevant documentation:
- Call guidelines: 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.
- Call Financial Guidelines: Explain the application budget cost eligibility rules and contain the main legal and financial rules.
- ECT2 Challenge area briefs (including proposed impact pathways): contain a description of the 6 challenge areas available for selection in this call
- Budget Template: An Excel-based budget template to support cities and their consortium partners to draft budgets, prior to putting them in the submission system.
- Call Application Template: A Word template containing the application narrative questions and check-boxes for a correct submission. This is to support offline/collaborative drafting, before copying into the submission system ahead of the deadline.
- Work Plan Template: An Excel-based template for capturing the key work plan components, and that reflects the submission system’s work plan architecture (Work Packages, Deliverables, Activities). This is to support offline/collaborative drafting, before copying into the submission system ahead of the deadline
- Risk register template: An Excel-based template for capturing risks, and that reflects the submission system’s Risk table architecture. This is to support offline/collaborative drafting, before copying into the submission system ahead of the deadline
- Impact Framework template and Indicators Template: A template that summarizes the 'impact' section of your application and will be attached to your application in the system. Can be filled through with the indicators listed in the indicators set.
- Indicators set: List of indicators available for the Impact Framework.
- Letter of Support: Mandatory. Letter of support from the city mayor (or equivalent) and/or any city official mandated to sign on the city/mayor/city council’s behalf, for the NZC Enabling City Transformation Programme. In the case of a multi-city proposal, one letter must be provided for each city.
All of the above files are available on this webpage: LINK