Stakeholders Discussing Zero Carbon Infrastructure

ZCI Project Progressing

In June, we published a news piece related to starting a project called Zero Carbon Infra-structure (ZCI), 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.

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 de-carbonised transport solutions,
Transition to zero carbon mobility: public acceptance and communication.

Project activities will support the participants to identify and share good practices, build capacity through training and knowledge transfer, and improve relevant policy instruments (in Kainuu this is the Structural Funds Programme 2021–2027) to provide the necessary infrastructure and create market confidence.

Regional Stakeholders Are Important

Within the project activities, cooperation with regional stakeholders has an important part. Already in the project planning phase, each partner has defined a group of regional stakeholders, whose networks and know-how are relevant for the project theme, and whose expertise and opinions are utilised throughout the project. In addition to the stakeholder organisations specified on the project application, also other relevant organisations may be invited to participate.

In Kainuu, the first meeting for regional stakeholders was organised on 16th August 2023. Unfortunately, some of the invitees couldn’t make it to this first meeting, but altogether 10 people yet attended, either in the meeting room at the Regional council of Kainuu or via remote connections.

Development Needs and Good Practices to Light

The project and the new project manager Matilda Veijola-Pyykkönen were introduced at the meeting. After that, the topics proceeded to current project issues. Each of the participants had the chance to share both their professional opinions and personal experiences on the important themes.

The topics discussed varied from the amount of EV’s to developing the chargind infrastructure, issues related to producing biogas fuels and developing awareness and commitment of the public.

Both the development needs and possible good practises of Kainuu region were discussed by the participants.Both of these aspects will be worked with during the autumn period with international partners. In addition, a meeting and a site visit related to sustainable urban logistics will take place in Cork, Ireland, in October.