HLAVNI MESTO PRAHA

Their core work

Hlavní město Praha — the City of Prague municipal government — is the capital city administration of the Czech Republic, representing over 1.3 million residents and the country's largest urban environment. In EU research projects, Prague participates as a city-scale living lab and policy implementation partner, providing real-world urban infrastructure, municipal decision-making authority, and direct access to citizens for piloting energy transition and nature-based solutions. Their contribution to consortia is less about technical research and more about grounding innovations in actual urban governance: testing whether citizen co-ownership of renewables works at city scale, or whether nature-based financing models can be embedded in municipal planning cycles. As a major Central European capital with significant public procurement power, they offer what academic partners cannot — the ability to move from pilot to policy.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their earlier project (UNALAB, 2017), Prague's role centered on process and methodology — co-design, scenario thinking, roadmapping, and participatory governance tools, with innovative financing as a supporting theme. By their second project (SCORE, 2018), the focus had shifted decisively toward substance: prosumership, consumer co-ownership of renewables, demand side flexibility, and sustainable energy investment — concrete energy transition mechanisms rather than planning processes. This suggests a deliberate progression: Prague first built internal capacity in participatory methods, then applied those methods to the specific challenge of making citizens active agents in the clean energy market.

Prague is moving toward becoming a reference city for citizen-led energy transition, combining its public authority mandate with participatory governance tools to pilot prosumer and energy community models at capital-city scale.

How they like to work

Prague has never led an H2020 project as coordinator, which is consistent with how large public authorities typically engage in EU research — as implementation partners and living labs rather than scientific leads. Their 50 unique consortium partners from just 2 projects indicates participation in large, multi-city consortia (typical of urban innovation programs like Horizon's Smart Cities calls), where 20-30 partners per project is standard. This makes Prague a reliable large-consortium partner rather than a bilateral research collaborator.

Despite only two projects, Prague has engaged with 50 unique partners across 16 countries — a network density that reflects participation in large pan-European urban innovation consortia rather than narrow bilateral research ties. Their partners likely span other major European cities, research institutes, and energy companies involved in urban sustainability programs.

What sets them apart

Prague is one of the few major Central and Eastern European capital cities with direct H2020 participation, which makes it a valuable partner for consortia seeking geographic diversity beyond Western Europe — a criterion that EU evaluators actively reward. As a public authority rather than a research body, Prague brings something academic partners cannot: the power to embed pilot outcomes into municipal policy, procurement, and city planning documents. For any project that needs a real city as a test bed with genuine governance weight behind it, Prague's capital status and scale set it apart from smaller CEE municipalities.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SCORE
  One of the first EU projects specifically targeting consumer co-ownership in renewables, SCORE used Prague as a living lab for testing prosumer models and demand side flexibility — a forward-looking topic that has since become central to the EU's energy community legislation.
• UNALAB
  The longest-running of Prague's two projects (2017-2022), UNALAB combined nature-based solutions with innovative financing and co-creation methodology, giving Prague rare experience at the intersection of urban ecology and participatory governance.