Recognising the importance of helping cities to speed up their decarbonisation efforts the International Energy Agency has established a new Technology Collaboration Programme (TCP) Cities. This is an international cross-cutting initiative from the IEA family of technology programmes. It pools together all relevant information from the IEA cities-related Technology Collaboration Programmes and helps to reach out to the local level. The focus is on cities in transition and a number of high priority tasks have been initiated.
The main benefits arising from participating in TCP Cities are those gained by national programmes, such as leverage of R&D resources, technology transfer, training and capacity building. Countries lacking knowledge can benefit from experiences of those with more expertise thereby avoiding duplication of research efforts.
At an individual level, TCP Cities allows researchers and experts funded by national programmes and industry to pool their collective expertise to produce high quality project outputs. By taking part in the projects, they create and reinforce their own technical networks, the benefits of which remain long after the particular project has formally ended. This does not happen quickly, but over the course of three to five years, these networks of expertise become established as excellent international channels of communication.
TCP Cities currently has three member countries. All member countries have the right to propose new projects, and each country then decides whether or not to participate on a case by case basis. TCP Cities projects are carried out on a ‘task shared’ basis, in which participating organisations arrange for their own experts to take part.
About – IEA
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation that works to shape a secure and sustainable future for all, through our focus on all fuels and all technologies, and our analysis and policy advice to governments and industry around the world.
A Technology Collaboration Programme (TCP) is a multilateral mechanism established by the IEA with a belief that the future of energy security and sustainability starts with global collaboration. The programme is made up of thousands of experts across government, academia and industry in 55 countries dedicated to advancing common research and the application of specific energy technologies.
There are 39 currently active Technology Collaboration Programmes, one of which is the Cities TCP, originates from TCP-EBC-Annex 63 (https://annex63.iea-ebc.org)