Besides Lisbon, only Loures, Vila Franca de Xira, Sintra and Cascais have decided to apply for the European program that will select 100 cities to become carbon neutral by 2030 with public and private funding.
Beyond Lisbon, only Loures, Vila Franca de Xira, Sintra and Cascais have decided to apply for the European program that will select 100 cities to serve as carbon neutrality pilots until 2030. Internationally, the program Mission Cities attracted 377 applications, of which 362 were considered eligible in a first screening.
Lisbon, Sintra, Cascais Loures and Vila Franca de Xira may be the only municipalities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (which covers 18 municipalities) in the running for the European program, but at national level there are 12 other cities interested. These are Porto, Vila Nova de Gaia, Braga, Guimarães, Viana do Castelo, Famalicão and Valongo in the north; Coimbra, Figueira da Foz, Tomar and Abrantes in the center, and Torres Vedras in the west.
It's worth noting that Tomar and Abrantes applied together in order to reach the minimum 50,000 inhabitants required. Joint applications were also made by two Intermunicipal Communities, the Região de Coimbra and the Região do Oeste - although the municipalities of Coimbra and Torres Vedras (which belongs to the Western Region) decided to make individual applications as well, according to Público newspaper.
Adding together the individual and joint applications, Portugal has 18 applications. There are 26 interested parties from Italy, 30 from Germany, 24 from Spain, 23 from France, 22 from Turkey and 18 from Greece. - These were the countries that contributed most to the total of 262 applications considered eligible, reports Público. Matthew Baldwin, deputy director of the European Union's Directorate-General for Mobility, is responsible for this program and, at a presentation of the initiative in October, said that the 100 cities chosen will have access to 360 million euros directly financed by the fund Horizon Europe and will be part of a network with other participants that will enable them to access other sources of public (European) and private funding, as the newspaper explains.
The 100 cities that will take part in this program will be pilot cities in terms of carbon neutrality and smart solutions over a time horizon of less than a decade (until 2030), anticipating the EU's climate targets by 20 years.
