The M100 hub, a national project through which Romania aims to support Romanian cities in their green transition, announced the names of the ten cities selected to receive financial support in the coming years for actions to help them in their green transition.
These cities will be helped to reduce carbon emissions by 2035.
The announcement was made during the Forum for Climate Neutrality M100, which takes place in Bucharest between October 29-30 at the MINA Museum.
The ten cities, Alba Iulia, Bistriţa, Braşov, Bucharest, Buzău, Constanța, Iași, Oradea, Reșiţa and Timisoara, will receive support in the coming years in the development of climate neutrality plans and will be financed to implement actions that help them in the green transition. The ten cities that will be supported to reduce their carbon emissions by 2035 and to transform into smart, green and citizen-friendly cities were chosen by an international jury made up of specialists in urban planning and development, writes news.ro.
The ten cities thus join the three that have already started the race towards climate neutrality, namely, Cluj Napoca, Bucharest sector 2 and Suceava and that have already taken important steps towards the green transition. The M100 mission is a mirror mission of the European one and aims to replicate European policies at the national level and to help other Romanian cities to reach the carbon emission reduction targets assumed at the national level through the European Green Pact.
“M100 is today one step closer to the goal we set for ourselves at the national level: to achieve climate neutrality in Romanian cities. Congratulations to the 10 cities that were selected in the M100 Mission, for the effort they made and for the innovative solutions they proposed. The serious work, however, begins only now and I assure the 10 selected cities that we will do everything possible to help them not only learn how to build strategies to become climate neutral, but also to finance their solutions. We know that these efforts must be supported by adequate funding, so we propose that by 2035 we will finance, through M100, projects worth 1 billion euros of the 10 cities selected now and of the three from the European Mission, Cluj -Napoca, Bucharest – Sector 2 and Suceava. This is just one of the M100 initiatives, and in the future we will continue to offer support to all Romanian cities and diversify the types of support we offer”states Ovidiu Cîmpean, Secretary of State, Ministry of Investments and European Projects and Coordinator of the M100 Hub.
In the next period, the 10 cities will develop, with the help of consultants from the M100 Climate City Contracts team, a model action plan developed at European level to help them identify the individual solutions they need to implement in order to become climate neutral.
Later, through M100, cities will be able to apply for funding to implement actions from the plans developed in areas such as: green energy, sustainability and smart mobility, circular economy, green governance, etc. The ten cities will also learn from the experience of the three cities already included in the European Mission and will be able to become, in turn, examples of good practice for other Romanian cities.
The cities were selected following a process similar to the European one, and the applications received from the 16 participating cities impressed the members of the jury with the innovative ideas proposed.
