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The Scottish Cities Alliance partnership between Scotland's seven cities has reaffirmed its commitment to working together for the next four years.

The Alliance - a collaboration between Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth and Stirling along with the Scottish Government to promote the country's economic potential around the world - aims to continue to drive the city economies through 2018.

Top of the agenda is its Smart Cities and Hydrogen work streams, and their goal of boosting the nation's environmental credentials underpinned by a commitment to make each city efficient and sustainable.

Chair of the Scottish Cities Alliance, Councillor John Alexander, said: “The Alliance is a very powerful approach that highlights to the rest of the world the great opportunities Scotland’s cities have to offer investors and businesses.

"By combining our strengths and working together the Alliance will create the robust investment opportunities that will attract the global investment our cities need to achieve our ambitions for inclusive growth.

“The Smart and sustainable work going on in parallel to the investment promotion allows the Alliance to show that we are working for the long-term economic and environmental benefits for our cities – something we are keen to emphasize.

“2018 is set to be a very exciting year for Dundee with the opening of the V&A Museum at the Waterfront and I look forward to that alongside many exciting projects in the Alliance bearing fruit for the benefit of Scotland’s cities and Scotland as a whole.”

The Scottish Cities Alliance has so far raised more than £125 million since 2011.

The partnership between Scotland's seven cities - Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth and Stirling - and the Scottish Government was set up to boost economic growth through investment in infrastructure and technology and has raised more than £125 million since 2011

Smart Cities has seen more than £24 million invested in the seven cities, with £10million of that total coming from European funding, with the aim of using data gathered from technology to improve its services, create new opportunities for business and enhance the quality of life experienced by citizens.

Last year the projects the cities plan to take forward were announced and these projects, which include intelligent street lighting, smart waste and open data platforms are now under way. The Alliance has further ambitious plans to build on this body of work in 2018, following interest in the projects from strategic locations around the world from the Silicon Valley to the City of London to South Korea.

It also made significant progress in hydrogen technologies, in particular Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH-JU) for the commercialisation of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure and hydrogen fuel cell buses – Joint Initiative for Hydrogen Vehicles Across Europe (JIVE).

These are the most ambitious projects to-date, deploying large scale refuelling infrastructure and fuel-cell bus deployment across Europe.

The bids into the FCH-JU were successful which means that Aberdeen under JIVE will deploy a further 10 hydrogen fuel cell buses in 2018 and Dundee will look to deploy 12 fuel cell buses in 2019 under JIVE 2.

In May, working with Scottish Enterprise, the Alliance held the first major event at the Scottish Government’s new headquarters in London, Scotland House.

The investment opportunities showcased at the event continue to receive ongoing international investor interest.