The Paris Agreement and SDG13 on Climate Action require a global drop in Green House Gases (GHG) emissions to stay within a “well below 2 degrees” climate change trajectory. Cities will play a key role in achieving this, being responsible for 60 to 80% of the global GHG emissions depending on the estimate. This paper describes how Research and Innovation (R&I) can play a key role in decarbonizing European cities, and the role that research and education institutions can play in that regard. The paper highlights critical R&I actions in cities based on three pillars: (1) innovative technology and integration, (2) governance innovation, and (3) social innovation. Further, the research needed to harmonize climate mitigation and adaptation in cities are investigated.

The successful and fast development and deployment of renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction technologies is a continuing and structural challenge. The deployment of these technologies is slowed down and sometimes even stalled due to societal challenges like public resistance, lack of appropriate policy and regulations, unsolid business cases and uncertainty concerning the impact on the environment. In this paper we elaborate on societal aspects that influence technology development and deployment and introduce the societal embeddedness level (SEL) framework. Building upon the technology readiness level (TRL), the SEL framework enables the assessment of the current level of societal embeddedness of energy technologies in order to identify the societal aspects which need to be taken into account to accelerate deployment of energy technologies. The SEL framework takes into account four societal dimensions (impact on the environment, stakeholder involvement, policy and regulations, and market and financial resources) and four stages of technology development (exploration, development, demonstration and deployment) that are linked to the TRL. The SEL framework has been elaborated for CCS technologies and is being applied to the monitoring of geological CO₂ storage by the ACT II project DigiMon (Digital Monitoring of CO₂ storage projects). DigiMon is an ACT second call project, funded by the national funding agencies in the period September 2019–August 2022.

The transition towards low-carbon thermal energy systems requires solid information provision to support both public and private decision-making, which is future proof and optimal in the context of the system dependencies. We adopt a data ecosystem approach to answer the following research question: How can a data ecosystem be analyzed and developed to enable the data-driven support of the local thermal energy transition, by capturing both social and technical aspects of the urban thermal energy system? A case study research design of the Netherlands, with an embedded case of the city of Utrecht therein, was used, including data collection involving 21 expert interviews representing a diversity of stakeholders, and qualitative data analysis using NVivo version 10. The data ecosystem includes the necessary elements, roles, and context for decision makers in a local heat transition and captures the social as well as technical aspects of an urban thermal energy system. Assessment of the data ecosystem pertaining to thermal heat transition in the city of Utrecht shows that it is still in its infancy phase, with challenges, barriers, and shortcomings in all its key elements. We present suggestions for the (re-)design of an inclusive and holistic data ecosystem that addresses the current shortcomings.