Cities and Electric Mobility: Sharing of Lessons Learnt and Best Practices from Implementation

The topic of electric mobility is but one piece of the sustainable transport puzzle, enabling access to mobility for all. It is nevertheless important for reasons of local air and noise pollution abatement, climate change abatement, and economic growth. In order for electric mobility to succeed however, it is imperative to have transport, energy, and urban planning link together at the outset. For this reason, the event will cover the experience of EBRD’s Green Cities programme coupled with UNIDO’s efforts to develop a market for electric vehicles in challenging contexts. United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is working to develop a market for electric vehicles in several countries by overcoming the barriers to their adoption as well as ensuring that they are powered by renewable energy sources. The approach is meant help markets reach economies of scale, guaranteeing that they enjoy both the economic and environmental benefits that can originate from the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Those include decreased air pollution and carbon emissions, but also the creation of green jobs and the development of homegrown, innovative technologies and business models. EBRD’s flagship Green Cities programme spans 53 cities with €1.59b portfolio and has led to 64 signed projects since it was set up in 2016. The programme has covered all sectors of sustainable infrastructure, engaging with municipalities and cities to enable long-term sustainable investments. The Green City Action Plans (GCAPs) that emanate from this programme have yielded substantial results, but a key lesson emerging is the importance of a structure to engage stakeholders in order to enable crosscutting sustainable investments. The event will elucidate how the transport sector is tackled within the GCAP with a programmatic and systematic approach to decarbonisation, building on cities' public transport and catering for other modes and differing user preferences. The event will feature an open discussion, along with case study examples, including (but not limited to): • EBRD Green Cities projects which have been developed as part of a systematic approach in the Green Cities programme e.g. Novi Sad (Serbia), Amman (Jordan), and Sofia (Bulgaria) – e-bus projects • Private sector participation in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) to drive the electric mobility transition in the taxi sector • Micro-mobility – exploring how cities can work with the private sector that offers services that complement public transport, to create mobility hubs • Importance of long-term planning of charging infrastructure integrated with renewable energy, based on Albania case study • Stimulating e-mobility solutions uptake through new business models and life-cycle solutions for batteries • Tourist industry development through e-mobility solutions (Jordan – Petra) • Urban Foresight's EV City Casebooks