Gemeente Zaanstad (NL)
Partner Description
The municipality of Zaanstad has around 155.000 inhabitants, making it the 16th municipality in the Netherlands. Investing in sustainability is important to protect and preserve the environment and our living environment. We owe that to current and future generations in Zaanstad. In order to become a climate-neutral city in 2030-2040, cooperation with our partners such as housing associations, industries and collective social initiatives are indispensable.
Zaanstad is part of the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (MRA). The MRA is an area with 32 local governments and two provinces, however, the MRA is not a legal entity. MRA is a densely populated area, with 1,2 million inhabitants. We want to connect with society as a whole. We have early adopters but need to scale up. For this we need to connect a large diversity of citizens and companies to the energy transition.
The MRA is one of the leading regions in the North Sea Region NSR. Municipality Zaanstad represents the MRA in EMPOWER2.0. Zaanstad is an active player in the regional energy transition. Zaanstad works on decentralized energy solutions, in line with the EU agenda. The municipality has a leading role on the topic of Smart Grids in the MRA. Our organization’s benefit is to create involvement, co-investments, and enlarge energy awareness. This improves citizens’ social-economic position. We can test the initiatives from the MRA, strengthen them, and work on international roll-out.
Role in EMPOWER2.0
The main role of the Municipality of Zaanstad lies in project management and lead partner tasks. Zaanstad also plays a pivotal role as public partner in the MRA, supporting the empowerment of WeSpark and other non-energy-cooperatives. Zaanstad will also be active in mapping the current challenges, building prosumer propositions, and applying these prosumer propositions to Zaanse Groene.
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