Climate-Neutral Trondheim 2030?

This village will work together with Trondheim Municipality (Trondheim Kommune) and relevant stakeholders on rethinking the municipal climate policy. We will discuss the key challenges facing Trondheim on its journey towards becoming a climate-neutral city by 2030. This village sets its one foot upon the University City TRD 3.0 partnership between NTNU for upscaling and knowledge transfer. The other foot stands on EU’s Cities Mission, Net Zero Cities, and the New European Bauhaus program. This village aims to focus on Trondheim’s climate transition in phases of planning, implementation and improvement.

Relevant competency

We call for students of multidisciplinary profiles with backgrounds such as urban planning, engineering, social and political science, natural science and art,  who aim to understand and address complex societal challenges through collaborative thinking. 

About the village

This village is offered by Department of Architecture and Planning and in cooperating with Trondheim kommune on rethinking the municipal climate policy, which echoes that Trondheim has been selected as one of the 112 EU’s climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 (Cities Mission) in April 2022.
EU’s Cities Mission requires that Trondheim acts as experimentation and innovation hubs for the other European cities via reaching climate neutrality by 2030. This should be taken into consideration in the Municipal Energy and Climate Plan (Klimaløftene Kommunedelplan for energi og klima 2024 –2030), the Municipal Climate Budget (Byrådets forslag til handlings- og økonomiplan 2025-2028, Budsjett 2025) and Trondheim’s Climate City Contract. It is also important to examine the interplay between the climate action plan and other policy instruments in the municipal planning system.

When rethinking the municipal climate policy, students need to identify challenges for achieving multiple goals at the same time, such as sustaining a high-quality urban living environment (affordable, inclusive, beautiful, and just) and reducing GHG emissions and other negative environmental impacts.  Furthermore, the implementation of actions needs to be done in a very short time frame. During this period, more and more unpredictable climate-related damages might occur, causing various problems in the urban environment.

This complex issue provides multiple relevant aspects to be examined, and NTNU has a lot of on-going activities to connect to. Here are some aspects of interest:          

Systemic changes in governance, regulatory structures and advocacy

Climate neutrality requires a mission-driven and cross-disciplinary approach. Not (only) based on the efforts of engaged individuals, but firmly embedded in organisational structures, reducing fragmentation of responsibilities, strengthening policy coherence across sectors, firmly embedding them in innovative regulatory and political policies.

Cultural and spatial quality

How can we engage with stakeholders on concrete activities related to their daily lives and experiences? How can we make urban transformations more tangible and visible, and engage people on a more personal level, to empower them to take on more active roles?

Financial and circular value chains

How can we identify investment opportunities, create public-private-people partnerships, de-risk assets and monetise co-benefits between climate neutrality and urban quality? How can we balance commercial interests and urban quality across a broad range of stakeholders?

Data-driven co-creation

Data-driven tools are often technical, mono-sectoral, such as energy and mobility, and not used in systemic co-creative planning approaches with municipality, professional stakeholders and citizens. How can we obtain more-fit and better-quality data, improve understanding of how simulation and monitoring tools can be integrated in urban planning and design, and create participatory governance structures that translate data into decision-making and action?

Energy and mobility

Improving urban space access without increasing GHG emissions from transport or energy, without deteriorating water and waste management, and without decreasing air and sound quality, is a challenge for all cities. The cities also need to deal with large amounts of tourists throughout the year, in a sustainable manner.

Nature-based solutionsRe-Value cities will integrate nature-based solutions in their Waterfront Pilots and long-term Territorial Transformation Plans to boost climate change mitigation and adaptation, urban quality, biodiversity, health and well-being, air and sound quality, and local food production. By themselves these measures are not unique - the innovation lies in their packaging with the other 5 systemic challenges in each individual urban regeneration Pilot.

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