REGEN's 2nd Consortium Meeting

We were in Dublin, Ireland, on Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 October, for the 2nd Consortium meeting of the Horizon Europe research and innovation action REGEN. Started in January 2024, REGEN aims to support the decarbonisation of cities at neighbourhood scale by developing a toolbox combining digital technologies and sustainability assessments. 

The meeting was a great opportunity to look back on the past nine months, presenting the results of the diagnosis phase in the four demo sites and sets of urban interventions they intend to implement for the regeneration and decarbonisation of their neighbourhoods.

REGEN’s 23 partners were welcomed by the Irish partners of the project (Dublin City Council and Dublin’s Energy Agency CODEMA) and had the chance to visit several key facilities supporting the decarbonising of the Irish capital city:

  • – Dublin Waste-to-Energy Facility, also known as the Poolbeg Incinerator, a state of the art waste-to-energy plant serving the Greater Dublin Area, that processes up to 600.000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste per year to produce up to 60 megawatts of electricity (enough to power 80.000 households), and will soon provide district heating for up to 50.000 homes.
  • – Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant, which treats over 40% of Ireland’s wastewater (or the equivalent of 1.64 million people) and is currently at over capacity and is expected to receive a 500 million EUR upgrade to be able to treat the wastewater for a population equivalent of 2.4 million people.
  • – A visit of the Ringsend area, Dublin’s demo site for REGEN, where a Neighbourhood Regeneration Office (NRO) supported by REGEN will soon open to facilitate the relation between customers / residents and service providers.

The discussions also focused on finalising the Assessment Framework for Urban Regeneration (AFUR). AFUR’s purpose is to validate that the decarbonization pathways chosen at the neighbourhood level enable the city to meet its resilience challenges, including ecological ceilings (maximum thresholds) and social foundations (minimum requirements) necessary for ensuring citizens’ well-being.

In the coming year, once AFUR is finalized, we, the ISOCARP Institute will endeavour to present it to urban planning professionals and engage with municipalities and project developers interested in applying AFUR to their neighbourhood regeneration projects, whether planned or already underway! We are looking forward to the work ahead.

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