Making cities more sustainable
As urbanisation and climate change accelerate in the EU, cities are under pressure. Over 75% of the EU's population lives in urban areas, which also account for about 70-80% of the EU’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) emissions.
The JRC has made significant strides in helping cities become more sustainable, thanks to its crucial support to the New European Bauhaus, the EU Cities Mission and the Global Covenant of Mayors.
It has also helped with future-looking research and vital monitoring data, for example on GHG emissions and air quality.
It's about being bold, being brave, being innovative, and having a huge level of ambition to create projects that will be genuinely transformative for all of the citizens in our towns and cities across Ireland. And the New European Bauhaus gives us that approach
Transformed the new European Bauhaus into a vibrant community
The New European Bauhaus (NEB) is an important pillar of the European Green Deal which the JRC has helped to coordinate. NEB helps stimulate bottom-up local engagement by encouraging citizens, local governments, businesses, and other stakeholders to come together to co-create sustainable solutions and thereby shape the future of neighbourhoods and cities.
Since the launch of the NEB in 2020, the JRC has helped to grow this community into an EU wide movement of over 1500 members, connecting many different regions across Europe. The vibrancy of the NEB community was evident at the second edition of the New European Bauhaus Festival that took place in Brussels last April, with over 5000 participants. Rose Power from Ireland confirms in her quote the importance of the NEB approach and its positive impact at local level.
Helped anchor the new European Bauhaus in the EU
As a testament to NEB’s success, the EU established a new and unique funding tool in 2024: the New European Bauhaus Facility 2025-2027. This multi-annual financial instrument will ensure a solid continuation of the JRC’s excellent work in helping to revitalise neighbourhoods across Europe. In addition, the JRC will become an example of sustainability and innovation with the construction of the first net-zero emissions building of the European Commission at its Sevilla site.
Supports cities in their ambition to reduce emissions and increase resilience
The JRC provides research, data, guidance and methodologies to cities striving to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. Through its scientific support to the Covenant of Mayors and the EU Cities Mission, the JRC plays a key role in assisting cities to achieve ambitious sub-national climate targets. It monitors progress and assesses the impact of local action to decarbonize cities, increase resilience of territories, fight energy poverty and become climate-neutral as soon as 2030.
Helps forecast the impact of temperature changes
In 2024, the JRC undertook the first pan-European assessment of present and projected excess mortality to be caused by temperature change. Published in the Lancet journal, this study informed policymakers and authorities about foreseen challenges to public health systems, particularly during periods of extreme heat and cold.
Supported air quality monitoring and modelling
The JRC has also helped ensure air quality data is reliable and comparable across the 27 Member States. Over the past 20 years, the JRC has analysed air pollutants, worked on innovative measurement techniques and supported national laboratories.
This work contributed to the development of a standard European method for air pollution measurements, an important basis for determining whether urban areas meet the strict pollutant limits set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and now included in the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive, published in 2024.
The latest edition of the JRC’s Urban PM2.5 Atlas provided accurate data about the sources of the air pollutant responsible for most of the well documented premature deaths: particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5). Thanks to the JRC air quality tool, Covenant of Mayors cities can now evaluate synergies and trade-offs between air quality and climate policies.