European projects

STEER – Integrated transport solutions to steer NWE's just energy transition - NEW

Interreg programme

11 European partners

2025 – 2028

In the pursuit of a just energy transition, metropolitan authorities across North West Europe (NWE) face a formidable shared challenge: the dominance of fossil-fuelled private car use has led the transport sector to become the largest energy consumer and major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Low Emission Zones (LEZs) are helping to curb pollution, yet they often come with unintended consequences and conflicting interests between energy, housing & transport stakeholders. Against this background, electric carsharing emerges as an energy-efficient solution to address them, while aligning with the goals of the revised TEN-T regulations at the EU level. STEER tackles these challenges through transnational cooperation, bridging the gaps in expertise across different sectors and departments to deliver systemic, cross-tested solutions. The project brings together 11 complementary cross-sectoral partners from 6 NWE countries (NL, FR, BE, IE, DE, LU), to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions. Using digital tools and community-based co-creation, STEER will empower public authorities to develop integrated, energy-efficient, and inclusive e-carsharing approaches. Following a dual peer-to-peer approach, 6 cities will pilot 3 novel complementary approaches to e-carsharing, combining digital tools with the optimisation of public spaces, housing, energy grids & governance models. A decision-support toolkit will build upon pilot results to demonstrate project potential to steer NWE’s just energy transition, maximising the use of renewable energy for transport. The project will also enable upscaling through a transnational leader-follower approach, supported by a comprehensive cross-sectoral Strategy and tailored Local Action Plans. Additionally, the STEER Academy will enhance the capacity of 120 practitioners, while a transnational Roadmap will guide long-term replication across NWE. The Metropole du Grand Paris in one of the 11 partners L’Institut Paris Region will support technically MGP to conduct and evaluate an experimentation of a carsharing service.

CHESS – Cities Hub for Environmental Sustainability Strategies - NEW

Interreg programme

6 European partners

2025 – 2028

The CHESS project aims to enhance local policy instruments for sustainable urban and peri-urban mobility. The project actions gathers only six partners : Perugia city (Italy), Iasi city (Romania), Värmland Region (Sweden), Võru city (Estonia), Regional agency for the development of enterprises Alma Mons Ltd in Novi Sad (Serbia) and L'Institut Paris Region (France). Starting with regional analyses in each territory, the project identifies strengths, weaknesses, and improvement methodologies for urban mobility plans and governance structures. Interregional Exchange Meetings will be held to foster contextual understanding, gather insights, and analyze local practices. Good Practices will be identified and assessed for greener solutions and better urban-suburban connectivity. Monitoring involves local stakeholders evaluating policy effectiveness, using indicators such as reductions in CO₂ and other pollutants increased public transport usage, adoption of green transport solutions, improved urban-suburban connectivity. Traffic congestion levels and economic impacts will also be measured. The project aligns with the EU Cohesion Policy by reducing regional disparities and promoting balanced territorial development. It supports the European Green Deal's climate neutrality goals by improving urban mobility policies and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, it contributes to the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Smart Mobility by enhancing multimodal transport and facilitating digital and green transitions. For Ile-de-France, the policy instrument is the regional sustainable urban mobility plan. Ile-de-France Region is an associated partner.

DREAMS – Driving Equitable and Accessible 15-Minute Neighborhood Transformations

DUT 2022 programme

28 Europeans partners

January 2024 - December 2026

The DREAMS project aims to examine how co-created and user-centric mobility services, mobility and flexible activity hubs can contribute to accessible, sustainable and inclusive 15-minute City (15mC) neighbourhoods in urban outskirts in European cities and regions. DREAMS will conduct research in six living labs across Europe: Budapest, Brussels, Munich, Paris, Utrecht and Vienna.

DREAMS will firstly provide a comprehensive and comparative analysis of 15mC lifestyles in a variety of low- to mid-density suburban and urban outskirts in the six regions. Secondly, DREAMS will develop and test new business models and governance frameworks for new shared mobility services and flexible activity hubs in low/medium density areas. Thirdly, DREAMS will develop and apply a decision support tool for the co-creation and impact assessment of mobility services, mobility hubs and flexible activity hubs in the DREAMS living labs. Fourthly, DREAMS will examine the mobility, accessibility and wider societal impacts of the mobility services, mobility hubs and flexible activity hubs services.

Finally, the last aim is to give policy recommendations on pathways towards creating sustainable and inclusive urban mobility in 15mC neighbourhoods in urban outskirts through the utilisation of co-created and user-centric mobility services, mobility and flexible activity hubs and new governance-business models.

Read more  the DREAMS project

UPPER – Unleashing the Potential of Public transport in Europe

Horizon Europe programme

January 2023 - December 2026

The UPPER Project will put the public transport issue at the center of the mobility ecosystem by implementing a combination of 84 push and pull measures, acting on the five innovation axes that condition users’ choices: mindset and culture, urban mobility planning, mobility services ecosystem, road network management and democratic governance. These measures will act on four different timescales: communication, operations, infrastructure, and urban fabric. This integrated and holistic approach will ease the cooperation among authorities and operators, provide a physical and digital environment for testing measures, update the existing information management system and feed into existing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. Five UPPER living labs and twinning sites will be set up.

Read more  the UPPER Project

WISE-Act – Wider Impacts of Autonomous and Connected Transport

COST Action programme

October 2017 - April 2022

The main aim and objective of WISE-ACT is to investigate the wider impacts of Autonomous and Connected Transport, and to describe the best practice on how to evaluate them.

Several specific objectives contribute to address this overarching aim.

Research Coordination objectives:

• Develop common terminology about ACT across Europe
• Co-ordinate trials and share know-how across diverse localities to highlight best practice in Europe and beyond
• Compare simulation results and end user preferences from diverse settings to develop plausible scenarios for ACT deployment
• Roadmap about the wider impacts of ACT deployment to inform policy makers and regulators about the current and future requirements
• Identify and evaluate viable business models for the passenger and freight transport industry
• Assess user acceptability and inform the general public and key stakeholders about the opportunities and risks of ACT.

Capacity Building objectives:

• Build a community fostering scientific dialogue, knowledge exchange and the development of a consolidated thematic framework about the wider impacts of ACT
• Support Early Career Investigators (ECIs), while promoting gender balance, through a multidisciplinary training programme
• Bridge distinct scientific fields (e.g. legal informatics with transport economics and engineering) through STSMs
• Act as a transnational stakeholder platform which will provide evidence based recommendations to academics, practitioners and policy makers about the deployment of ACT.

Read more WISE-ACT website

CME – Clean Mobile Energy 

Interreg programme

9 European partners

2018 - mid-2022

The European Commission has approved through its Interreg NWE programme; a three and a half-year project (from 2018 until March 2021) “Clean Mobility and Energy for Cities” to facilitate the uptake of low carbon technologies, products, processes and services in sectors with high energy saving potential, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in North West Europe. The €7.4 million project aims to find significant solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in cities by combining renewable energy sources, energy storage and the charging of EV's using an innovative energy management system.

CleanMobilEnergy was to demonstrate that decentralised energy can be used more efficiently by using storage and a web based interoperable iEMS platform to balance supply and demand peaks thus creating better business cases to make large scale roll out across the NWE economically feasible.

Within this project, a renewable energy generation plant was to be built in four locations across the NWE. All partners together were to develop a system for distributing energy flows across storage, charging facilities and the net, with the current being traded at a favorable moment in time. CleanMobilEnergy was also to investigate whether the different combinations in the diverse countries lead to an economically viable system.

Read more  the Clean Mobile Energy

CREATE – Congestion Reduction in Europe, Advancing Transport Efficiency

Horizon Europe programme

18 European partners

2015 to 2018

CREATE is a 36-month research project (2015-2018) funded by the European Commission under Horizon2020. It addresses the challenging problems of dealing with car use faced by most cities in Europe and beyond. CREATE’s main objective is to reduce road congestion in European cities, by encouraging a switch from cars to more sustainable transport modes.

The project will explore historical patterns of urban road traffic and car use, identify success factors in encouraging modal shift and lessons learnt in Western European capital cities, and work with Eastern Europe and Euro-med city partners to assist them in developing sustainable strategies. It will also identify ways to deal with the consequences of future population growth and associated mobility densification, through new technologies, business models and social practices.

Read more: the CREATE project

ECOTALE – External Costs of Transport and Land Equalization project

Interreg programme

9 European partners

2014 to 2018

The reduction and/or internalization of the environmental, spatial and social costs caused by the transport sector are policy objectives which have been commonly assumed over the last decades. Within a market approach and according to the “polluter pays” principle, internalization is a way toward a comprehensive payment actually born by the transport users. In the “classic” vision, this is obtained by means of some additional pricing (tolls, vignette, park pricing, vehicle/fuel taxation) imposed to citizens/enterprises generating road traffic. However, incompleteness of the application of direct pricing and a missing or only partial link with modal policies, spatial planning and infrastructural decisions limit the internalization policies in terms of their ability to reach improvements of the sustainability of the transport systems over the time.

ECOTALE aims at setting up modelling tools to implement them in real case studies. To foster the planning and investment approach to transport internalization (i.e. reallocation of public resources in the context of spatial planning, infrastructural decisions and modal policies) Regions and Cities will be provided with a knowledge base created from real experiences and a set of methodological and analytical tools to guide and support plans and policies.

EU regional and local authorities will be provided with practical guidelines and methodologies. ECOTALE project aims at integrating the traditional approach based on the “economic" internalization of external costs (i.e. pricing measures) with a wider internalization approach considering land use and environmental planning as well. ECOTALE promotes the exchange, sharing and transfer of policy experience, knowledge and good practices in the field of the internalization of external cost of transport, planning and investment decisions.

Read more: the ECOTALE project

Life ARTISAN – Increasing the resilience of territories to climate change by encouraging the use of nature-based solutions

LIFE programme

28 partners in France 

Early 2020 - late 2027

Integrated into the European programme “Life”, the project ARTISAN aims to increase nature-based solutions for adaptation to climate change (NBS) by 2028 on French territory. Its aim is to demonstrate and promote the potential of nature-based Solutions (NBS), raise awareness and increase the skills of stakeholders on this theme, support and amplify NBS projects throughout the national territory.

Through the implementation of nearly a hundred actions, Life programme ARTISAN must enable the creation of a framework suitable for the deployment at all scales of nature-based solutions.

To carry out this mission, 3 systems are put in place:

• A demonstrator programme made up of 10 Pilot Sites spread across diverse metropolitan and overseas territories
• The design, adaptation and dissemination of tools
• The creation and management of a network of actors.

ARB website: the Life Artisan Project

REGREEN

Horizon Europe programme

20 partners across Europe 

September 2019 - August 2023

REGREEN promotes urban livability, through fostering nature-based solutions in Europe and China using evidence-based tools and improved urban governance accelerating the transition towards equitable, green and healthy cities.

The Regional Biodiversity Agency (ARB ÎdF) and more broadly the Paris Region Institute were involved in several areas of the REGREEN project, particularly concerning the role of biodiversity in the design and management of nature-based solutions, but also on the integration of these solutions in urban planning and regional development and on the training of technicians and elected officials. Finally, one of the essential contributions was to study the potential for open soil, unsealed grounds and renaturation in Île-de-France, with numerous partners.

ARB website: the REGREEN Project

French Capital City of Biodiversity

LIFE programme

2010 - 2011 as part of European Life+ programme – 2012 to today as a national programme

The first edition of the French Capital of Biodiversity competition took place in 2010, on the occasion of the International Year of Biodiversity. Until 2011, the operation was carried out as part of a European Life + programme. Since 2012, the project has been supported by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Since 2010, the French Capital of Biodiversity competition has been aimed at all French municipalities and intermunicipalities, offering them the opportunity to promote and disseminate their good practices in nature protection.

The objectives of the operation are multiple: educational (giving ideas for action to community agents and elected officials), transversality (creating dialogue between different services and elected officials within the community), valorization and promotion (through trophies awarded) and finally identification and mutual sharing of good practices (through the annual thematic action compendium, conferences and events and field visits).

ARB website: La Capitale française de la biodiversité

SPARE – Strenghtening and Monitoring PAthway to REsilience in Île-de-France

Horizon Europe programme

2 regional partners

September 2024 - September 2026

Development of the regional observatory Adaptation to climate change.

More information to come (only available in French) on the Regional Council website.

ENERGee Watch – The European Network of Regional GhG Emissions and Energy Watch

Horizon Europe programme

10 European partners 

September 2020 - September 2023

The overall aim of ENERGee Watch is to launch a peer-to-peer learning program to enable regional and local authorities to timely and accurately define, monitor and verify their sustainable actions. The learning will focus on regional/provincial authorities and their agencies that are responsible for collecting and overseeing the monitoring of mitigation and adaptation measure indicators in order to empower them to make use of best practices. Throughout the project course, three learning cycles were held, totaling 88 participants.

• Energy data collection: treatment and acquisition
• Monitoring, Reporting, Verification: follow-up of implementation of actions
• Indicators and strategies on adaptation to climate change
• Data display, dissemination and validation by end-users.

AREC/The Paris Region Institute was in charge of the adaptation course (conception and organisation of peer-to-peer sessions).

It organised also 2 sessions (in French language) dedicated to Ile-de-France local authorities.

Furthermore, an observatory platfom for greenhouse gas emissions was developed, six energy observatories were expanded, and prospects for five new energy agencies emerged.

To further support learning, a public e-learning platform and a repository of 55 best practices were released.

The project ended with a regional webinar dedicated to data which emphasized the Paris Region Institute expertise and a European webinar' series on the 4 topics.

The ENERGee Watch Peer-to-Peer Learning Programme

The ENERGee Watch website

Further details (in French) on the AREC website.

PUBLEnEF – Energy Efficiency policy support

Horizon Europe programme

13 European partners 

February 2016 - January 2019

PUBLEnEF aims to assist European Union Member States in implementing effective and efficient sustainable energy policies (with the focus on energy efficiency) and empower them to make use of the best practices and policy processes implemented in other Member States at the national, regional and/or local level. Specific objectives of PUBLEnEF include to assess and learn from existing energy efficiency policy implementation practices in EU countries, regions, and cities; to strengthen the networking opportunities for relevant public agencies; and to develop and adjust tools for public agencies to help them to implement energy efficiency policies.

The steps of the project are to:

• Identify the needs from national, regional and local authorities for the implementation of EE policies
• Collect the best practices and tools for overcoming these needs and replicate them to various MS, regions and municipal authorities
• Develop roadmaps and enhance the process of successful implementation of policies
• Build and strengthen existing networks of policy makers enabling the knowledge exchange from national to regional to local level in EE policy.

Results:

PUBLEnEf gathered over 200 tools on policy implementation in energy efficiency (digital handbooks, stakeholder engagement guidance, resource planning or process monitoring tools, e-learning courses, software and others).

It developed 15 roadmaps at the national, regional, and/or local levels in 11 EU MS. Roadmaps refer to technical assistance policymakers in overcoming specific barriers they faced in implementing their existing plans (SEAPs or regional strategies).

D3.3 Compilation of energy efficiency policy roadmaps

D5.2 Summary of materials for good practices and tools for addressing specific needs

Closed website. Further details on the FEDARENE website.

MLEI-POSITIF

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

2 Ile-de-France partners 

2013-2017

Conception and organisation of training sessions targeted to co-owners, syndic de copro and local authorities in order to support the development of Energie Posit'if (energy renovation of condominiums).

GO ECO

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

8 European partners 

2013-2015

Objectives : developing a cooperative approach, between companies in a business park, to reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions through the development of integrated energy concepts.

TRAINREBUILD

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

8 European partners 

2010-2012

Energy renovation of condominiums: Conception and organisation of training sessions targeted to co-owners, syndic de copro and local authorities.

CHP GOES GREEN

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

8 European partners 

June 2010 - June 2013

It promotes the use of renewable energy sources in combination with cogeneration and biogas projects through capacity building of local and regional stakeholders:

• Analysis of the European and regional legal and economic framework in 8 good practice cities/regions
• Development of action and implementation of good practices
• Public campaigns addressing policy makers, building owners and bioenergy stakeholders
• Training of policy makers with regards to technical, ecological and economic issues
• Transfer of good practice to further cities / regions.

BAMBINI

More information to come

2009-2012

PRO-MOTION

More information to come

2008-2010

COMMERCE (PRO'MOBILITE)

More information to come

2008-2010

EL-EFF

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

7 European partners 

2007-2009

Promotion of electricity efficiency through:

• Study on electricity consumption in the Paris region
• Surveys of electricity providers, consumers, professional associations
• Organisation of technical workshops on electricity savings in social residences and in students residences
• Launching of the campaign "Minus 10%" targeted to the municipalities of the region
• Conception and dissemination of communication tools (posters, light bulbs, kakemonos).

EUREM

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

15 European partners 

2006-2009

EUREM is a standardised European Energy Manager training programme comprising courses, self-learning and practical work, combined with access to a European alumni network for continued knowledge exchange.

Programme included among others: energy basics, project management, economic calculation, compressed air, energy efficient buildings, heating and cooling.

AREC was involved as a training content developer (on geothermal energy) and mentor. The learning sessions in Paris region were provided with the expertise of Ecole des Mines de Paris, Afortech and the Centre des formations industrielles.

The EUREM website

City Instruments

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

8 European partners 

2006-2008

Objective: collect, develop and exchange tools on energy efficiency, development of renewable energy sources and fight on climate change at metropolitan level:

• Best instruments for energy renovation, RES and sustainable mobility
• Necessary administrative framework
• Financial instruments
• Monitoring impact of energy policy
• Information and communication tools.

AREC associated the city of Paris in the workshops all over Europe and organised the final conference of the project in Paris.

European conference : Education on energy

Intelligent Energy Europe programme

Single beneficiary

2006

Single beneficiary

Programme Energie Intelligente Europe

Organisation of a European conference on education to energy in September 2006. Both in English and French.