Towards Climate Neutrality: Progressing Key Actions for Positive Energy Districts Implementation

Abstract Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) represent an emerging urban transition paradigm, an advanced framework to effectively attain decarbonization targets, as well as a holistic approach to foster more resilient and livable cities. However, implementing PEDs is challenging, demanding substantial planning, design, and operations changes. Mainstreaming PEDs calls for innovative legal, institutional, business, and organizational frameworks, as well as an active involvement of the main actors (i.e., cities, municipalities, communities, investors, industry players, and service providers), to co-design and jointly progress ambitious agendas, multiscale plans, flexible instruments, and adaptive structures. Benefitting from the authors’ cooperation within the Horizon 2020 project, Cooperation in Science and Technology COST Action ‘Positive Energy Districts European Network’ (PED-EU-NET in PED-EU-NET | COST ACTION CA19126, 2020), the proposed contribution addresses relevant issues and opportunities characterizing the development of PEDs in Europe, relating attention to effective implementation, context-specificity, replicability, and upscaling. Among the results achieved in the first year of the COST research activities, the authors present an understanding of the PEDs policy landscape in Europe, and a catalogue of the key lessons learned from PEDs in progress. In detail, some comprehensive and interrelated aspects (stakeholder-oriented strategies and technological and system innovation) that have emerged towards enabling conditions for upscaling PEDs structure are analyzed. Through the investigation of existing framework conditions, barriers, and enablers of piloting projects, as well as emerging impacts at international level, the authors provide original insights, and formulate key recommendations for take-up and advancement towards climate neutrality, making a timely and original input to enhanced scholarly understanding of PEDs.