The City of Warsaw officially launched the development of the Polish capital’s Green City and Climate Action Plan (GCCAP) on Thursday, 3rd December. The City will develop the plan as part of the EBRD’s innovative EBRD Green Cities programme, which in June welcomed Warsaw as the first Polish city to join the network.

The GCCAP is the first of its kind under the Bank’s flagship urban sustainability programme. The EBRD has partnered with C40 – a global leading organisation promoting decarbonisation and climate resilience in the world’s largest cities – to combine their expertise to outline the low-carbon and climate resilience development pathway for Warsaw. The plan received donor funds from Poland’s Ministry of Finance and the TaiwanBusiness – EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund.

The GCCAP launch event featured statements from Warsaw’s Mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, the Head of Taipei Representative Office in Poland, Ambassador Weber V.B. Shih, as well as EBRD, C40 and Arup – the consultancy supporting the development of the plan. The meeting was an open invitation, and was attended by city representatives, civil society and international organisations interested in Warsaw’s green commitments and the EBRD’s programme. Work on the GCCAP will continue over the next year.

The €2-billion-plus EBRD Green Cities programme helps each member city tailor solutions to its environmental needs with a unique combination of measures designed to move cities towards a lower-carbon and more liveable future. On joining the programme, cities undertake a trigger project with EBRD finance and craft their own Green City Action Plan, or GCAP, setting out further actions. In Warsaw, the City is combining the GCAP method with C40’s Climate Action Plan to deliver a unique product.  Warsaw, the largest city in Poland, faces the challenge of providing transport services for a growing population, while addressing air quality concerns and high greenhouse gas emissions.

Warsaw, as its trigger project, last week received an EBRD and ING loan of PLN 392.5 million (€87.2 million equivalent) to improve its metro system, Poland’s first project under EBRD Green Cities. The loan will co-finance the acquisition of up to 45 new railcars, part of a metro improvement operation which is the city’s single largest investment project to alleviate congestion. The project is part of a wider financing package from the European Investment Bank and the European Union.