After receiving a large number of responses to their needs assessment, the EU-funded initiative Big Buyers for Climate and Environment are in the process of finalising their topics for four future working groups. Public buyers who are interested in potentially collaborating on one of the topics (presented below) either as an active participant or with an observer role, are welcome to get in touch with the Big Buyers Secretariat by sending an email to info@bigbuyers.eu.

Mobility:

- Heavy-duty electric vehicles for waste collection, for street cleaning and maintenance, and recharging infrastructure
- Electric/hydrogen buses

Construction:

- Zero emission construction sites (using emission-free construction machinery)
- Circular construction (to be further specified - e.g. circular road materials, building with low-carbon or bio-based materials such as wood, or inclusion of reuse/recycled material in new construction)
- Energy retrofit/solar panels for heritage buildings
- Recycled plastics in construction

Artifial intelligence (AI)/information and communication technologies (ICT):

- Urban/smart lighting and 5G
- Digital twins for buildings/cities
- AI: Data Analytics for Public Procurement
- AI: Chatbot for internal and external procurement stakeholders
- AI: Tracking data on the Circularity/CO2 performance of procurement

Health:

- Digital healthcare: Better data collection/analysis, integrated patient flow management system
- Remote patient monitoring

Interested to find out more? Feel free to join informative meetings on Monday, 22 February to further discuss AI/ICT related topics at 14.00-15.00 CET (please contact manon.ghislain@eurocities.eu) or at 15.00-16.00 for circular construction (please contact kaitlyn.dietz@iclei.org).

ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and EUROCITIES are running the Big Buyers for Climate and Environment initiative on behalf of the European Commission, DG Internal Market, Industry Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW).