Representatives of the pilot city of Zagreb and the project partnership of the ActGREEN project - Activation of Green Courtyards for Carbon Neutrality; Nebojša Ivančević (Project Manager), Natalia Halbauer (Knowledge Transfer Lead), as well as representatives of project partners ODRAZ (Lidija Pavić Rogošić) and HDKA (Ivan Tolić), visited the project partner in the twin city of Poznań, Poland, from 6 to 9 October as part of the Twinning Learning Programme within the NetZeroCities programme funded by the Horizon Europe programme.
At the Poznań City Hall, we were welcomed by Deputy Mayor Mariusz Wiśniewski and Alicja Nowak, Head of the Climate Protection Department in the Climate and Environment Office, along with colleagues from the department, including Joanna Michalska and others.
On the first day of the visit, we visited the private company Veolia, which distributes thermal energy and produces electricity. The focus of the visit was the possibility of presenting their operations to Zagreb’s city offices and companies involved in the distribution of energy, water, and wastewater, with the aim of strengthening cooperation, exchanging knowledge and ideas, and exploring opportunities for collaboration on decarbonisation projects with targets for 2030 and 2050. Our colleagues were invited to visit the City of Zagreb to present their decarbonisation plan and participate in other activities aimed at mutual knowledge exchange.
In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to see Poznań’s nature‑based solutions projects: transformed parking areas turned into urban forests, green bus stop shelters, removed concrete and asphalt replaced with green corridors, parks, and pleasant pedestrian spaces free of traffic congestion, creating a more comfortable and higher‑quality environment for citizens.
On the second day of the visit, at Poznań City Administration, we learned about good practices in participatory budgeting and the involvement of citizens and NGOs as stakeholders in planning and decision‑making on municipal budget spending (Civil Dialogue Commission). One of the presentations covered the current state of strategic documents related to climate change and decarbonisation in Poznań, and another presented tree‑planting initiatives and the city’s tree registry.
Representatives of the ActGREEN project presented the project status and future activities. The ODRAZ representative presented citizen‑engagement activities, while the HDKA representative presented the heat‑island mapping of the City of Zadar.
After the presentations, a workshop coordinated by NetZeroCities representative Hannah Walther was held, during which representatives of the City of Zagreb selected the best practices from Poznań applicable to Zagreb — and vice versa.
This visit confirmed the success of the TLP programme, in which the City of Zagreb participates as a pilot city and the City of Poznań as a twin city, with the aim of strengthening cooperation and exchanging knowledge and experience.
Some of the innovations we learned about included: innovative methods of harvesting energy from data centres, large water‑based battery storage systems, plans for integrating geothermal potential into the decarbonisation of the city’s heating system, as well as examples of nature‑based projects in Poznań, subsidised underground and above‑ground rainwater storage tanks, parcel‑locker areas with green walls, and tree‑planting maintenance programmes with monitoring options to improve maintenance and control municipal financial expenditure.
