18 March 2026

The energy transition highlights that energy is a critical ingredient for city life, enabling all activity, and impacting affordability for its residents and the competitiveness of local businesses. The electric grid is emerging as critical infrastructure that is under immense pressure to maintain 100% stability while modernising towards sustainable and decentralised renewable energy systems – all while power and energy demand are expected to double in the coming years. Cities emerge as orchestrators of investments worth hundreds of millions of euros that businesses, households, public agencies and grid operators will make the coming decade. New local political leadership and capabilities are essential to ensure a just transition.

Hosted by the mayor of Ghent and Antwerp, the European Conference on City Energy is an opportunity to join peers from across Europe to explore emerging political topics and angles, and to discuss alternative viewpoints on energy at a city-level.

We are supporting this conference in the framework of the Interreg North Sea project COPPER, that develops and pilots state-of-the-art solutions for energy planning in decentralised energy systems in six frontrunner municipalities.