REMARKABLE Climate Leaders will drive carbon neutrality in 7 EU regions

Kicked off last week, the new Horizon 2020 project REMARKABLE will build leadership capacity in 7 regions across Europe through its Climate Leadership Programme.

A central issue with climate leadership relates to the lack of identifiable leaders at a municipality level. While some communities are trying to focus on mitigation and adaptation strategies, they are frequently lacking the strong leadership that will help them achieve a robust response. By creating a network of climate leaders, REMARKABLE Climate Leaders will minimise the gap in leadership capacity needed to achieve the strategic goal of climate neutrality by 2050.

With the aim to establish a network of 320 current and emerging climate leaders by 2024, REMARKABLE will support local leaders to take the next step in achieving carbon neutrality. Through their actions and inspiration, climate leaders will inspire their municipalities, public authorities, communities and regions to transform their approaches.

Climate Leadership Programme

The Climate Emergency and Energy Transition agendas require clear leadership, ambition, courage and commitment. REMARKABLE will build new leadership capacity in 120 actors from 7 countries in Europe through a Climate Leadership Programme (CLP). The CLP will be inspired by ethnographic research and will be designed with and for leaders across public authorities, municipalities, civil society and politics.

The CLP will be co-created by the leaders, thus creating and providing new leadership skills. Through a people-centred approach, REMARKABLE will use ethnography addressing key characteristics, drivers and behaviours of pioneering leaders, research the challenges i.e. lack of knowledge, capacity, organizational support which presently constrain the implementation of current and emerging strategies.

Roadmaps for public authorities

REMARKABLE Climate Leaders will address the leadership gap directly and will produce a Climate Neutrality Guide for Public Authorities. To translate strategic aspirations and policy ambitions into concrete and disruptive far-reaching measures, 60 roadmaps for public authorities will be created within the REMARKABLE project. The 7 regional energy agencies involved in the project will develop 14 climate neutrality services to expand their roles as change agents in the Clean Energy Transition and Climate Neutrality.

Climate Neutrality Training, Climate One Stop Shops, Coaching, Activation are some of the proposed new services expected to emerge REMARKABLE Climate Leaders will exploit its outcomes and results through the creation of an EU Climate Leaders Circle.

Minimising leadership gap

The REMARKABLE Climate Leaders Circle will create synergies with existing networks and initiatives to support and enhance their impacts, complementing the technical, financial and policy capacity building agendas with new knowledge on Leadership and Climate Neutrality. The Climate Leaders Circle will have 320 leaders from across Europe. Innovative activities will be done within the Circle, such as Climate Neutrality Challenge which will be an event organised for young climate leaders to target new innovations and ideas.

From EU to local ambition and action

The REMARKABLE Climate Leaders sets 6 clear objectives:

1. Develop an innovative and unique Climate Leadership Programme informed by ethnographic research.
2. Increase the skills and capacity of 120 current and emerging local leaders from public authorities, municipalities and communities.
3. Stimulate actions and measures within public authorities through the creation and implementation of 60 Climate Neutrality (by 2050) Roadmaps, stimulating €300M investment and engaging 1,200 stakeholders.
4. Drive new innovations and measures through the creation of Climate Neutrality Services responding to new opportunities, needs and demands.
5. Facilitate exchange, networking and growth of the REMARKABLE approach through a Climate Leaders Circle, operating at EU and National level.
6. Exploit the outcomes of REMARKABLE Climate Leaders and ensure its sustainability beyond project lifetime.

Project partners

To see the project partners, click here.