On 16-17 June 2021 165 participants from 13 countries gathered virtually for the BEACON Final Conference to advance the work and success that schools and municipalities have initiated in the past three years through the project.

As part of the project Bridging European and Local Climate Action (BEACON), national workshops were organised in all of the BEACON countries. The overarching aim of the virtual national workshops was to identify, specify and decide on further steps towards improving the national framework conditions for climate action on the ground. These national workshops took up the various strands of the BEACON project and further served to anchor the impulse for stronger cooperation between government levels.

The idea with transferring the second BEACON study visit to a virtual format was to provide multipliers in the partner countries with some informative and illustrative best practice examples for local climate protection. The results were two 15-minute videos.

The Climate Change Mitigation Kit by EUKI project BEACON helps municipalities get inspiration for planning and monitoring climate change mitigation actions. The publication is available in English, German, Czech, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese and Romanian.

EUKI project BEACON held a workshop on 23-24 February entitled “Climate Neutrality – Better Buildings – Better Future” with stakeholders from municipalities, schools and the national government in Romania. The participants came together virtually to explore how to improve energy performance in school buildings and how climate action can be incorporated into the national curricula.

The team behind EUKI project BEACON has launched the comic “Climate Change Challenge”. After two years of work, the comic has been published in German and English and is now available on the EUKI website. In the book, siblings Sofia and Gabriel travel through Europe and learn how European communities are tackling climate change. Get a copy and share Climate Change Challenge with (potential) climate protectors in your community.

In many places it is nowadays common for parents to drive their children to school every day. This creates traffic in front of schools, which leads to unsafe situations, noise, and emissions that are harmful to health and climate. EUKI project BEACON’s partner cities Pirna (Germany) and Písek (Czech Republic) addressed this problem in a handbook.

EUKI project BEACON has successfully held its last vertical workshop in Greece. This article wraps up the virtual meeting and the discussion.

How can we design interesting and impactful virtual meetings? EUKI project BEACON has created a guide with many practical tips for virtual workshops.

BEACON conducted a virtual vertical workshop with stakeholders from local and national levels on the topic of financing local climate action in Portugal.