The transition paths to overcome the climate and energy crisis face a significant structural challenge: predominant approaches are often excessively technocentric, ignoring local adaptation, cultural nuances, and the social fabric. Consequently, socioeconomic groups such as women, youth, the elderly, and energy-poor households are frequently excluded from climate strategies.

Additionally, Local and Regional Authorities (LRA) often lack the cross-sectoral capacities and collaborative mechanisms necessary to design, implement, and evaluate effective transition policies within their territories.

To address this issue, the LIFE-HANDS-ON project develops and implements an innovative life-long and participatory “learning-by-doing” method tailored to public administrations. The goal is to accelerate Just and Clean Energy Transition (CET) policies that are mission-oriented, cross-sectoral, and data-driven.

The novel dynamics and practices will foster debates, iterative transdisciplinary learning, agreement reaching, awareness raising, and the evaluation and improvement in the implementation of innovative policies.

This will be achieved by institutionalizing two meso-level governance institutions:

Inter-departmental Working Groups within public authorities, enabling diverse departments (urbanism, social services, legal and financial, environmental, culture, etc) to reach cross-sectoral diagnosis, co-design shared policies and collaborate in implementation and evaluation.
Multi-stakeholder Assemblies gathering representatives from public authorities, social, cultural and economic local actors, and citizens—including underrepresented groups—to deliberate on energy policies with new approaches.

To achieve this ambitious goal during its three-year execution, the project is structured around five specific objectives:

· Multidisciplinary research: Combine SSH and STEM, to understand the current state of local policies and skills gaps in pilot and replicating authorities, as well as multi-stakeholder relations and the social perception of groups that are more distant from the climate consensus.
· Hands-on capacity building: Strengthen the ongoing capabilities of the technical and political teams within the Inter-departamental Working Groups, training in dynamic capabilities to collaborate, understand problems and reach solutions in new ways and lead the orientation of the Multi-stakeholder Assemblies.
· Foster diverse participation and collaboration: Leverage the combined influence of public institutions, citizens, communities, and private entities through the Assemblies. The aim is to empower these actors to tackle complex challenges and formulate transformative policies that prioritize both climate mitigation and adaptation from a justice perspective.
· Demonstrate impact in pilot cities: Test this transversal and multi-actor model (the learning-by-doing method) in three pilot cases with diverse contexts and skill gaps (Parla in Spain, Vidin in Bulgaria, and Copenhagen in Denmark), implementing participatory methodologies for iterative monitoring and evaluation.
Drive dissemination and replication: Utilize the acquired capacities and new governance models from the pilots to strategically disseminate the project’s methodology and tools, replicating them in more than 35 municipalities across Europe.

What will be the most relevant results?

The project actions are designed to leave an organizational legacy and tangible tools that accelerate change:

• · Creation of meso-level governance institutions: Interdepartmental Working Groups and Multi-stakeholder Energy and Climate Assemblies will be established, connecting institutional, economic, educational, social, and media representatives. These novel governance spaces are expected to enhance the capacities and practices of all the participant local stakeholders.
  · Develop the LIFE-HANDS-ON Toolkit: A set of more than 20 practical tools designed to recruit participants, promote debate, facilitate agreements, raise public awareness and evaluate process impact, available in this webpage.
  · Co-design and Implementation of Local Policies: Concrete strategic plans will be developed and budgeted in the pilot cities. In Parla, a Community Energy Action Plan and a Sociocultural Change Plan will be co-designed; in Vidin, an Intersectoral Energy Plan and a governance model for SMEs and energy communities will be developed; and in Copenhagen, a Neighborhood-Level District Heating Plan will be prepared.
  · Energy and Climate Justice Framework: A framework will be developed to ensure inclusion, recognition, and distributive equity in decision-making processes, supported by a continuous evaluation to assess achievements and address potential deviations.
  
  · Replication through Peer-to-Peer Learning: The solutions, manuals, and innovations created will be transferred through training sessions to over 35 European municipalities in Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark and the Netherlands, categorized into different levels based on their needs to ensure highly effective advisory support.