Does your project’s success depend on the involvement of citizens? But are you struggling to interest or motivate them? In Manchester, Dave Coleman (City-zen’s Advisory Board member) and his team have developed a method with which they have so far managed to excite and engage over 4.000 people about climate change. Not just the usual suspects but people from all walks of life, such as Somali refugees, unemployed social housing tenants and children.

“Grenoble Ville de demain” (city of tomorrow) is a platform that wants to bring together all the talents of the city to make the energy transition a reality. Transition has different characters : economic, social, urban, energy, digital,... and everybody can take part in the solutions from citizens to the decision makers to the scientist or the cultural actors. Everybody is welcome!

About 5 years ago, ventilating the desire to eat less meat would have been frowned upon. Going vegan would have meant social suicide. Not today. Living a more sustainable lifestyle is on the rise. The number of people that separate waste or buy organic is growing. But when it comes to bigger investments, such as home renovation, choosing the more sustainable option can be harder. Not everybody dreams of spending their hard earned money on solar boilers, heat pumps or insulation.

Every year ALEC (climate and energy agency) leads and organizes the school energy challenge, a program of Grenoble-Alpes-Métropole. The aim is to make children aware of global warming, energy savings and air pollution. Understanding these issues may seem abstract to 10-year-olds. That's why the agency partnered with GEG to monitor some of the participating schools in Grenoble within City-zen project.

The real way to move forward in the energy transition is to consume less energy to heat, move, manufacture... The need is also to gradually replace fossil fuels such as gas, gasoline and fuel oil by renewable energies! To achieve this, Grenoble-Alpes-Métropole has recently voted an ambitious roadmap by 2030: reduce all energy consumption by 22%, boost renewable and recovery energies by 35% and reduce the fossil energies by 30%. This is a pioneer process in France.

Let us learn from you so that we can reduce the energy consumption in Europe even further. More and more people are deciding to renovate their house in a sustainable manner: for example with insulation, double glazing or by installing solar panels. You might be one of them. But it is also possible that you did not take any measures (yet) to reduce your energy consumption.

www.cityzen-smartcity.eu

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