Think-Tanks'Press

the EU Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy is “an initiative supported by the European Commission bringing together thousands of local governments that want to secure a better future for their citizens. By joining the initiative, they voluntarily commit to implementing EU climate and energy objectives. The Covenant of Mayors was launched in 2008 in Europe. Not only did the initiative introduce a first-of-its-kind bottom-up approach to energy and climate action, but its success quickly went beyond expectations.”

The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, the largest global alliance for city climate leadership, launched in 2015, “has been capitalising on the experience gained in Europe and beyond, and is building upon the key success factors of the initiative: its bottom-up governance, its multi-level cooperation model and its context-driven framework for action”.

Climate Action Network Europe is “Europe’s leading NGO coalition fighting dangerous climate change”. ( CAN Europe is a regional node of Climate Action Network — headquartered in Bonn, Germany —  “the world’s largest environmental network with over 1,700 Non-Governmental Organisations active in more than 130 countries, driving collective and sustainable action to fight the climate crisis”. )

Launched by the European Commission, the European Climate Pact is part of the European Green Deal and is “helping the EU to meet its goal to be the first climate-neutral continent in the world by 2050”.

The European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition aims to “provide a neutral space where policy-makers and regulators can meet stakeholders to discuss climate change policy and how to manage the transition to a low GHG- economy in a sustainable way. While focused on European climate policy, ERCST fully recognizes, and incorporates in its activities and thinking, the global dimension of climate change policy”.

Zero Carbon Analytics is an international research group providing insights and analysis about climate change and the energy transition. Its researchers and analysts “specialise in understanding and synthesising the developments in energy systems, land use, climate science, just transitions and other important topics in the climate debate”.

The European Climate Neutrality Observatory was launched in mid-2023 as an independent progress monitoring initiative that uses an indicator-based framework and scientifically rigorous analysis to help the EU achieve climate neutrality. The ECNO exists to ensure the EU is set up for climate neutrality success by regularly assessing economy-wide, on-the-ground progress and providing an independent check of the EU policy processes that drive it.

Since 2007, Climact, a “leading-edge consultancy”, has been “empowering governments and organisations to act on climate change, towards a sustainable zero-carbon society by 2050”. 

The carbon-pricing watchdog : 

Carbon Market Watch is an independent, not-for-profit watchdog and research organisation with unique expertise in carbon pricing and a track record of shaping and influencing international and European climate policy. It monitors and analyses critically the carbon pricing plans and climate policies of governments and corporations and calls them out when their performance does not match their promises, leads to environmental damage or ignores people’s rights. It does not just identify what is wrong, it also proposes ways of putting it right.

And finally, on carbon capture,

Zero Emissions Platform is the trusted advisor to the European Union on industrial carbon management technologies. It works on developing and accelerating the commercial deployment of these climate technologies to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and net negative emissions after that.

Transport & Environment is a green transport generalist think-tank ( working on 11 different topics ). It is Europe’s leading advocate for clean transport. 

On the theme of urban mobility, CIVITAS “is one of the flagship programmes helping the European Commission achieve its ambitious mobility and transport goals, and in turn those in the European Green Deal – it does this by acting as a network of cities, for cities, dedicated to sustainable urban mobility” ;  Clean Cities aims “to spark a healthy competition between Europe’s city leaders to go further and faster in the race to transition to zero-emission mobility by 2030” ; MobiliseYourCity is a “global Partnership of more than 100 partners for sustainable urban mobility planning”, including 74 member cities with a combined population of over 130 million people, and 16 member countries ; the EuropeanMobilityWeek “is the European Commission’s flagship awareness-raising campaign on sustainable urban mobility, it promotes behavioural change in favour of active mobility, public transport, and other clean, intelligent transport solutions” ; POLIS “is the leading network of European cities and regions working together to develop innovative technologies and policies for local transport” ; UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, is the only worldwide network to bring together all public transport stakeholders and all sustainable transport modes ; and the EU Urban Mobility Observatory “facilitates the exchange of information, knowledge and experience in the field of sustainable urban mobility”.

The European Cyclists’ Federation is a Brussels-based independent non-profit association dedicated to achieving more and better cycling for all in Europe.

The Platform for electromobility promotes electromobility and strives to develop solutions to electrify European transport.

ERTRAC ( European Road Transport Research Advisory Council ) is the European Technology Platform ( ETP ) for Road Transport. Supported by the European Commission, its mission is to provide a framework to focus the coordinated efforts of public and private resources on the necessary research activities. It can work for example on the question of Freight decarbonization and on the subject of Light Electric Vehicles.

The Clean Shipping Coalition “is an international association of civil society environmental protection organisations, and the only one with a purely shipping focus”. It helps “develop and drive global environment and climate laws on shipping”.

And finally, Eurocities is a think-tank with several green working programmes, including Mobility. It is “prioritising the design of safe, climate-resilient, and inclusive streets and spaces” and is “mainstreaming zero-emission mobility in cities, which involves making electric and active mobility the norm rather than the exception”.