Kapfenberg 2040 Pioneer Partnership: Transformation at all Levels

With its climate neutrality roadmap, Kapfenberg has established a strategic framework for achieving climate neutrality by 2040. The aim of the ‘Kapfenberg 2040 Pioneer Partnership’ is to accelerate the implementation of the climate neutrality roadmap in a way that brings about structural change, across three levels of ambition:

• Research & Implementation: Kapfenberg is pursuing an integrated transformation approach, in which key measures of the climate neutrality roadmap are implemented through two demonstration projects and systematically further developed through a research project on the defossilisation and diversification of district heating.
• Governance: To ensure the climate targets are firmly embedded in the long term, existing administrative and decision-making structures are being specifically developed further. The focus is on establishing clear responsibilities, integrating climate-relevant decision-making processes and setting up professional grant management.
• Learning environment: Kapfenberg is positioning itself as a supra-regional learning and knowledge-transfer platform. Through structured knowledge management, active networking and targeted capacity-building, experiences are systematically harnessed and made transferable to other towns and regions.

Implementation is carried out consistently in line with the climate neutrality roadmap and leads to the following outcomes:

• Accelerated and structurally effective implementation of the climate neutrality roadmap
• Demonstration projects with a high degree of replicability and scalability
• Strategically sound transformation pathways towards the defossilisation of district heating
• Sustainably established governance structures and effective funding management
• Significant capacity-building in administration and implemen-tation
• Transferable models and good practices for other towns and cities
• Positioning of Kapfenberg as a pioneering town and a key learning environment in the context of climate-neutral small and medium-sized towns

The municipality of Kapfenberg is carrying out the project ‘Kapfenberg 2040 Pioneer Partnership: Transformation at All Levels’ as part of the ‘Pioneer City Partnership for Sustainable Small and Medium-Sized Towns’ initiative – 2025 call for proposals. 4ward Energy Research GmbH has already made a significant contribution to the project’s development and has been commissioned to provide support for its implementation.

• Stadtgemeinde Kapfenberg