Tartu is the only Estonian city to have been selected for the European Commission’s mission 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 and will continue to move towards climate neutrality. On this road City of Tartu need a lot of help from Tartu Regional Energy agency (TREA) but mainly from the citizens and local companies. Also, many other smaller Estonian cities are encouraged by their work and have same goals but in longer timeline.
On this long way Tartu city with help of TREA use all the knowledge from EU projects which help them to engage local people and companies on this road. Also, Tartu City Energy and Climate Action Plan which was adopted in 2021 has to be rewritten with new goals.
Before the long summer holiday, TREA has last week full of engaging citizens through hackathon and living labs. Also, they had some workshops about energy-efficient technologies and had the opportunity to visit two smaller cities of Estonia and also host quests from Ida-Virumaa.
The week started with Tartu Urban Space Hackathon where local people were invited to come and create solutions for a Tartu they would like to live in. Topics areas were: Smart city, Accessible city, Green city, Inspiring city. All ideas from this event were focused on green technology, the first starting point for the City to improve its energy use.
On Monday evening TREA had a kickoff meeting for Võru City Living Lab in LIFE IP project BuildEST. LIFE IP BuildEST project is created to pursue Estonian national climate ambitions through smart and resilient renovation. In this project there are 3 pilot municipalities that represent different Estonian regions: Tartu represents a slowly growing city and hinterland, Võru is a shrinking city with a stable hinterland, Rakvere is the example of a shrinking town and hinterland. The same kickoff meeting for Tartu City Living lab is going to be in autumn 2022.
In Võru The LIFE IP BUILDEST project will focus on pushing the deep renovation of the historic town center of urban settlements that face a decrease in population and need overall renovation. For this TREA with Võru City Government set up a living lab for neighborhood-level renovation. The purpose of the living lab is to engage the communities willing to participate in the living labs of neighborhood-level renovations, develop renovation concepts and carry out the feasibility study of the planned interventions.
