A fun workshop with lots of engaged participants taking up stakeholder roles (Live Action Role Play) on energy community projects (including our JPI Urban Europe DUT ENERGY4ALL PED-EU-NET Hillevåg case) deserves to be celebrated with leisurely ice cream in this springtime sunshine :)

Exciting and spot-on stuff!

Time to get excited about PEDs! The closing conference of our network is running next week in Linz, with a packed programme that many in the team have been busy putting together over the past months. It's time :)

Good morning, Linz! Time for the closing conference of our PED network in Europe, bringing 125 delegates together from all over Europe to discuss the work we've carried out as 200+ members from 40 countries over the past four years - amazing \m/

It's happening \m/

Reflective words of welcome to Linz by Dietmar Prammer, Councillor for Urban Planning and Real Estate Stadt Linz, who emphasises the role of solar energy in urban futures alongside the urgent need to displace gas usage.

Now Hans-Martin Neumann tells us the story of Linz, starting right here in the old tobacco factory. Energy transitions are acts of place-making, and these cultural and material insights provide an essential historical embedding and context for current and future efforts.

Bringing people together across research, planning, design and all things urban is at the heart of making PED projects work!

So many cool projects and insights (and several examples she takes critical distance from) in this keynote by Iris Belle HfT Stuttgart on future trends in energy districts. Agog public!

Great conversations ongoing at the closing PED-EU-NET conference in Stadt Linz! First the core group reflecting on learnings from the past four years, now diverse practitioner perspectives on embedding knowledge into policy action to meaningfully impact urban residents' experiences.

Here's João Dinis Câmara Municipal de Cascais giving the PED-EU-NET audience some pearls of wisdom about the difference that action makes: it becomes a snowball rolling downhill gaining momentum, getting bigger and bigger. More PEDs and scaling of principles that work!

Here's a followup by Stefan Synek from Stadt München who suggests an urban agency dedicated to PEDs that systematically identifies areas and which processes must be enacted how based on an overview of fit for purpose practices.

Nadja Riedel Stadt Leipzig foregrounds the reality of uncertainty and importance of continuity. It isn't enough to get good initiatives off the ground, one has to keep them going!

What a pretty picture - the PED-EU-NET core group on stage to look back and look forward from our collective networking and collaboration on PEDs.

A highlight of the PED-EU-NET conference is breakout groups in workshop mode. Vital discussions that pull together a wealth of experience and expertise flow freely in such a convivial format.

After a choc-a-bloc afternoon of workshops and discussions, we close out the day's reflections in plenary, and now for the conference reception! With field excursions on the morrow.

A cool site visit on a hot theme!

This was a really fun and generative workshop to host with colleagues Fridtjof Nansen Institute - we're grateful to all the participants who took the time to contribute work and engage, and to the funders who made it possible to convene and collaborate: Norges forskningsråd PED-EU-NET SHiFT COST Action