Wiener Neustadt Climate neutral

Starting point / motivation

Since 1995, the city of Wiener Neustadt (hereinafter WN) has set the course for a long-term municipal energy strategy (and later increasingly for a climate strategy). Since then, several energy concepts, a climate change adaptation strategy and a 2021 urban development plan for WN (STEP WN 2030+) have been developed. The STEP WN 2030+ distinguishes between climate protection and climate change adaptation.

The creation of the STEP WN 2030+ enabled overall organizational learning through and with the newly created group "Urban Development, Transport, Environment & Energy". This group was formed from several specialist departments and was subsequently assigned hierarchically directly to the municipal director.

The climate neutrality roadmap "Climate Neutral Wiener Neustadt 2040", which is currently being developed, has initiated a fundamental discussion process. Comprehensive planning, operationalization and ambitious implementation as well as ongoing monitoring for a "climate-neutral WN" is the motivation for the desired public-public cooperation.

Without the additional capacities and learning from, with and through the public-public cooperation as an initial spark, WN cannot achieve a higher level of ambition on its own than previously planned by 2040.

Contents and goals

Urban governance is elusive to third parties. In addition to the actual control and regulation system, formal and informal structures and processes, the interaction between politics and administration, individual people and their motivation and networks play a role.

The planned funds from the public-public cooperation will be used to change the organizational structure and thus, to some extent indirectly, the process organization. The associated development of personnel and skills will flow into the operational and strategic interaction of the entire city. This interaction represents a city-wide administrative innovation.

At the beginning of the public-public cooperation, the final criteria led (e.g.: implementation horizon until 2030, expected individual climate impacts and roll-out potential within WN and other cities, necessary competencies, financial coverage, time criticality) district implementation list is not available because there are several processes such as climate neutrality roadmap, coordination with external stakeholders (e.g.: private owners, ARE, EVN), etc. are still ongoing.

WN actively supports the learning environment in the sense of the accompanying process of the Smart Cities networking platform and actively initiates learning processes from and to WN. This also happens through networking with other stakeholders and events where WN is often the venue.

Methods / implementation

In the groundbreaking first year of the public-public cooperation, the climate neutrality roadmap will be drawn up at the same time. This represents the starting point for the future progress and impact monitoring of the public-public cooperation. Furthermore, the following processes will take place in the first year:

• the organizational upgrade of the previous "Urban Development, Transport, Environment & Energy" group to a staff unit,
  • with simultaneous thematic expansion to include the topic of "climate",
  • adding a new hierarchy level and dividing it into 3 teams,
  • associated with this are new internal processes,
  • the onboarding of new employees,
• as well as the selection of the implementation districts and the determination of the first measures.

The selection and implementation of further measures is an ongoing process across the entire ÖÖK.

Expected results

The expected concrete pioneering results of the public-public cooperation (e.g. in the implementation districts, planned STEP WN 2030+ projects implemented earlier) are each placed in a city-wide context in WN.

Out of its own interest, WN will examine and pay attention to city-wide synergies and roll-out potential. (e.g.: zoning regulations, spatial planning contracts, ...;) as well as passing on what WN has learned to external parties.