The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (UTCN), together with the Politehnica University of Bucharest – coordinator, won at the end of 2022 a complex project to establish a National Competence Center for Smart Cities – Climate Neutral, following a competition at the highest level in the field, thus consolidating the location of our city Cluj-Napoca, in the top of smart cities at European level
The municipality of Cluj-Napoca was selected by the European Commission as a pilot city in the NetZeroCities program developed within a partnership formed by the Romanian Order of Architects – Transilvania Branch, Transilvania IT Cluster, Transylvania Energy Cluster – TREC, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca ( UTCN) Babeș-Bolyai University, Urbannect and Cluj Metropolitan Area. Cluj-Napoca is among the 53 pilot cities in Europe for the implementation of an urban transformation model in this sense, to accelerate climate neutrality. Selected pilot cities will be able to experiment with new ways of rapid decarbonisation over a 2-year program – adopting systemic, inclusive and multi-leveraged approaches to transforming urban communities. With the help of the won funding of 1.5 million euros from the European Commission, the strategies implemented at the level of the Cluj-Napoca municipality will then serve as best practice models for the other cities in Europe that aim to achieve climate neutrality. Practically, Cluj-Napoca will implement a common vision with some of the most important European cities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Milan or Budapest.