Change leaders from 27 countries gathered at the Rethink Cities Summit in Denmark last week. The conference focuses on using public-private partnerships as a lever for sustainable development and scalable solutions for climate transition. Viable Cities was present.
The climate transition requires cooperation between all levels of society. Over two days, change leaders from 27 countries gathered in Sønderborg to discuss solutions and approaches with examples from across Europe. The programme included success stories from Poland, the UK, Norway, Finland and of course Denmark.
From the Viable Cities sphere, Markus Paulsson from the system demonstrator CoAction Lund participated, which is part of the work on climate-neutral Lund, while focusing on scaling up effective solutions for faster climate transition nationally and internationally. Markus held one of the conference's mini-workshops, then about EnergyNet and the possibility of a new distributed electricity supply system.
- It is interesting to talk about EnergyNet at an international conference and feel the great interest, it confirms that CoAction Lund is developing in the right direction, says Markus Paulsson.
Highlights of the program included a workshop where participants provided input and solutions to some of the challenges facing Vaasa, Finland. Viable Cities' Henrik Søndergaard and Jonas Joelsson were also present.
- Nordic cooperation is already strong and we are excited to work closely with other Nordic ecosystems to replicate and scale solutions between cities and from one country to another," says Henrik Søndergaard.
Viable Cities will continue the dialog with Lund, Vaasa and Sønderborg to create a competitive and resilient Nordic partnership focused on scaling up system demonstrators.
The conference was organized by Project Zero in Sønderborg, a project committed to tackling climate change through concrete solutions. Sønderborg is also among the 112 selected pioneer cities in the EU's 2030 climate neutral cities mission, as well as Lund as one of seven Swedish cities.
