Since January 1st 2018, the Brussels Capital Region is a Low Emission Zone. The Brussels’ LEZ affects cars, vans, and buses and coaches, whether registered in Belgium or abroad. The aim is to help reduce concentrations of harmful pollutants in Brussels’ air (e.g. nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter) and thereby improve people’s health. After 3 years of implementation, Brussels Environment has collected information and monitors the impact of the LEZ on the vehicle fleet, on emissions and air quality concentrations. This will be presented, as well as the upcoming developments of the LEZ.

In December 2019, the European Commission published its long-awaited Strategy for Smart and Sustainable Mobility setting up a vision to make transport smarter and more sustainable. The strategy also set up an objective of 100 climate neutral cities in Europe to be achieved by 2030 and acknowledges the leading role of cities to improve transport sustainability. This session will explore the ways cities can benefit from this new impulse by the EU institutions to foster sustainable urban mobility and achieve cities’ objective in terms of climate change.  

Nowadays cities are facing big challenges regarding pollution, public health, inclusivity, and accessibility among others. In the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) we have been working hard to implement different solutions to address these challenges and we can already see some results. From the implementacion of the Low Emissions Zone in Barcelona to cyclologistics, I will explain innovative actions that AMB is doing within its territory.

Oslo has ambitious climate goals and the target is to become climate neutral by 2030. Today the transport sector is responsible for more than 50% of the Oslo’s emissions. This calls for strong actions towards traffic reduction and transition to emission free mobility solutions. In his presentation, Paal Mork from the City of Oslo will give an overview of measures taken to encourage electrification of transport. A widescale deployment of charging infrastructure gives the people of Oslo opportunities to choose electric vehicles. Added up with special pricing on toll roads and parking, the plan to introduce zero emission zones and tax exemptions, up to 70% of new vehicles are electric.

Today, serious global trends make tour planning increasingly complex. Often, error-prone manual and spreadsheet based planning approaches cannot cope with these known challenges. Thus, digitalized and automated tools provide excellent benefits to improve tour planning efficiency and accuracy. For all kind of operators, optimized tours offer a great potential for remarkable cost savings and CO2-emission reductions.  

Greenplan offers an algorithm for optimized tour planning and smart logistics in the B2B-sector. A fully dynamic planning approach enables customers from various industries to move goods or people in an intelligent and sustainable way. The innovative algorithm developed in cooperation with the University of Bonn considers the entire delivery area and deals with a high degree of complexity to find the optimal stop sequence for last mile shipments or service tours. In his presentation, Dr Clemens Beckmann will explain how Greenplan creates efficient tour plans and thus, serves the purpose of greener logistics.

City of Lahti has the honour following 11 previous cities as the European Green Capital this year. First city in Finland and so far, the most northern and smallest city to do so. Lahti has 120 000 inhabitants and a urban region population of 200 000, which means that Lahti is a typical European mid-size city.

As most of the Europeans live in cities like Lahti, it is far bigger in size when it comes to the influence it has as a forward thinking and pioneering city in its climate actions. Lahti strongly believes, that if much needed change in fighting climate change and implementing sustainable solutions can be done in cities like Lahti, they can be done everywhere.

The biggest challenge is to find common understanding in a way that speaks to the masses. Not just the believers. Fearing the unknown make people question science and facts. The necessity of fighting climate change is not prominent to everybody, because there is not enough right, suitable or powerful ways to reach different target groups.

City of Lahti is finding ways with its citizens and a versatile group of stakeholders to take long lasting and effective actions together.