Through the EU Green deal, the EU set ambitious targets to decarbonise transport. European Environmental Agency (EEA) estimated that road transport constitutes the highest proportion of overall transport emissions (in 2019 it emitted 72% of all domestic and international transport GHG) and 23% of the EU’s transport greenhouse gas emissions come from urban areas.
In March 2023, started the implementation of Zero Carbon Infrastructure (ZCI) project financed by Interreg Europe programme. The four-year project sets ambitious goal to support 8 cities and regions across Europe in their efforts to develop and impose green transport and zero carbon infrastructure on their territories. Kainuu is one of those regions.
The four-year ZCI project has a total budget of € 2 085 629 with € €1 650 049, 20 provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
To achieve that goal 8 partners – led by the County administrative board of Kronoberg (Sweden) and with the help of the Erasmus Centre for Urban, Port and Transport Economics (The Netherlands) – will cooperate, search and test practical solutions to overcome the challenges they are facing.
The project will investigate:
- Private (electric) vehicles: charging infrastructure – barriers and solutions,
- Sustainable urban logistics,
- The business model of sustainable urban mobility – incentives that build customer demand for decarbonised transport solutions,
- Transition to zero carbon mobility: public acceptance and communication.
Project activities will support the participants to:
- Identify and share good practices to address the key problems,
- Build capacity of 8 public authorities through training and knowledge-transfer,
- Improve 8 relevant policy instruments (in Kainuun this is the Structural Funds Programme 2021–2027) to provide the necessary infrastructure and create market confidence.
The project launch meeting was organised in Växjö, Sweden in March, and during the spring 2023, the project has been accelerating to full speed. The project partners have actively kept on touch online. The second face-to-face meeting took place in Mechelen in Belgium, where the participants also had the first official learning sessions related to charging infrastructure.
In Kainuu, the first meeting for regional stakeholders will be organised on 16th August 2023, right after the summer holiday season. At this time, also the project coordinator recruited to the Regional Council of Kainuu will start their work.
