As cities across Europe face growing pressure to cut emissions, the five Polish cities that participate in the Mission for 100 Climate and Smart Neutral Cities by 2023 (Kraków, Warsaw, Łódź, Wrocław and Rzeszów) have joined forces to tackle one of the biggest contributors to urban emissions: buildings.
Through the NEEST pilot project, funded under the NetZeroCities Pilot Cities Programme, they have developed a shared digital tool to support their Climate City Contracts and lay the groundwork for a just, inclusive transition.
The NEEST project focuses on systemic renovation strategies at building and neighbourhood scale. “Most of the buildings in Poland do not meet energy efficiency standards,” said Konrad Szpak, NEEST project manager in Krakow. “That’s why it is really important to have such initiatives.”
By targeting five typical Polish building types (block of flats, single-family house, tenement house, Millennium school, and commercial utility buildings), the project aims to develop scalable solutions that can be replicated across Poland and beyond.
Each city selected a pilot neighbourhood with one predominant building type to serve as the local testing ground. “We didn’t go for the richest or most famous district,” explained Szpak. “Rather, we selected typical areas, the kind you’d find in almost any Polish city.”
A shared digital twin platform
At the heart of NEEST is a shared digital tool: a comprehensive digital twin platform created through close collaboration with the Polish National Centre for Research and Development. The platform models buildings and neighbourhoods in 3D using data from drones, mobile scanners, and municipal and national sources. It integrates layers of information on energy performance, green infrastructure, mobility, waste, water, and demographic trends.
“We didn’t want to focus only on single buildings but to see the broader picture,” said Grzegorz Grzybczyk, Head of the Climate Unit in Krakow. “We looked at how buildings relate to their surroundings and considered everything from heat pumps to bike shelters, external lifts, and even green walls.”
The aim is to move from isolated retrofitting to integrated urban regeneration. “Our ambition is to shift from sectoral and fragmented approaches to innovative, holistic planning,” added Szpak.
The digital tool allows cities to model alternative renovation scenarios and estimate their environmental and economic impacts, including cost estimates and emissions reductions.
A key innovation is that the tool has been designed for reuse. “We’re not doing this only for our five cities,” said Grzybczyk. “We will have a special manual for others who want to use our experience.” The team is finalising short checklists and simplified guides that other municipalities can follow, regardless of size or technical capacity.
Building cooperation and trust
The NEEST project is notable not just for its technical innovation but also for its strong collaborative structure. Alongside the five municipalities, partners include the national research centre, external consultants, and NGOs. “We built a strong mandate for systemic change,” said Szpak. “Every partner had a clear role in one of the 10 work packages, from stakeholder engagement to financial modelling.”
A dedicated work package focused on stakeholder involvement. In each city, residents of the pilot neighbourhoods were surveyed before any technical design began. “We asked people: what are your challenges, your needs, your preferences?” Szpak explained. “It wasn’t about telling them what to do , it was about co-creation.”
Each city organised public workshops and awareness-raising events, including games and educational sessions. Two engagement models were developed: one specifically for citizen involvement and another for coordinating stakeholders within city administrations. “A city like Kraków is a complex organism,” said Szpak. “You need internal transition teams across departments to really deliver green actions.”
The biggest barriers: ambition and data
Looking back, the team is candid about the challenges. “Our project was probably too ambitious,” Szpak admitted. “We had 10 work packages and tried to cover everything from technical modelling to policy recommendations and financing tools.” Still, this complexity brought rich insights.
One major obstacle was data access. “Some private companies simply refused to share data, and even within the municipality there were legal doubts about what could be used,” said Szpak. Fragmented datasets and inconsistent naming conventions created hurdles. “Sometimes data exists but is unusable because of small administrative mismatches.”
The team had to navigate these legal and technical difficulties while ensuring the highest possible quality for the digital tool. “We wanted to base everything on evidence, not just intuition,” Szpak added.
From pilots to replication
Despite the barriers, the project has already delivered tangible outcomes. “We’ve strengthened our internal transition teams and built a community of practice across the five cities,” said Szpak. “Our administrations are more mature and better prepared to lead the climate transition.”
Perhaps the most important legacy is the potential for replication. A simulation tool developed during NEEST will soon be open for other Polish cities to use. It allows municipalities or housing associations to enter data and simulate various renovation scenarios, assess costs and benefits, and identify possible funding sources.
The project also caught the attention of peers abroad. Through the NetZeroCities twinning learning programme, the Croatian city of Slavonski Brod followed NEEST from start to finish. “They were very dedicated,” Szpak said. “They were especially interested in our citizen engagement approach and may launch similar assemblies themselves.”
Lessons for others
Asked what advice he would give to cities just starting their green and digital transition, Szpak did not hesitate. “Leadership is key,” he said. “If the mayor or president is not behind it, it won’t happen.”
Second, he stressed the importance of a dedicated transition team to manage projects and apply for funding. “Someone has to do the work,” he said. Finally, he called for realistic investment planning. “You can’t just talk about climate neutrality, you need a list of concrete projects with budget lines.”
With the NEEST project wrapping up this month, the five Polish Mission Cities are now better equipped to turn vision into action. Their digital tools and lessons learned will soon be shared more widely , and may help other cities chart their own paths to a climate-neutral future.
