A research project should show the way there, as the city councilor Eva Schobesberger (Greens) announced in a press conference on Tuesday. The city was recently reprimanded by the Court of Auditors for its insufficiently specific climate strategy.
Linz applied for the “City of the Future” tender of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and was awarded the contract. The “KlimaStadtLinz203” project is therefore funded by the FFG with support from the Ministry of the Environment with almost 100,000 euros. Climate-relevant data, important actors, already existing climate protection measures and control areas in the area of impact of the city are to be collected. Previous and new measures should form a basis for the new Linz climate strategy with the involvement of the population. All of this is intended to serve as preparation for the EU mission “100 climate-neutral cities by 2030 – for and with citizens”. It wants to support projects with which the climate neutrality strived for by the EU Commission by 2050 should be implemented in selected cities by 2030.
“If we now approach this ambitiously, it will also succeed,” Schobesberger is convinced. Specifically, she wants to analyze the areas of energy, transport and housing. The city councilor argues that large-scale industry is excluded from the creation of an urban climate neutrality concept because it is outside the city’s sphere of activity and that it requires all-Austrian and European efforts and support.
But she sees potential for action in the expansion of public transport, promoting e-mobility, unsealing of the floors in the city center, planting trees, greening facades and roofs, for example. The Green City Councilor is feeling political tailwind from the recent criticism of the Court of Auditors for the Linz area that they started to deal with it much later than other cities and that the existing program of measures is far too general. The Greens had already made proposals in the past in the local council, which were rejected. In the meantime, however, a lot has already been achieved, such as a climate analysis for the city – “a lot has happened when others think about it”.
