City_SEC - One Year On

Author: Lucia CATALANI, City_SEC Project Coordinator, Italy - Email

In one year of cooperation to promote local energy planning among the 49 City_SEC municipalities from 8 European countries, several activities have been realized by the project partners to raise local awareness on the importance of contributing to achieve the EU energy goals within the Covenant of Mayors. More importantly, by May 2011, most of the City_SEC municipalities will have signed up to the Covenant of Mayors, committing to go beyond the EU energy targets within the City_SEC framework.

At the beginning of the project, Regional Development Agencies and Regional Energy Agencies,  - City_SEC project partners - facilitated the official setting up of Sustainable Energy Communities composed of the municipalities involved at local level that, since the project initiation, had decided to join the project activities. Their aims were:

• to undertake a common path towards energy efficiency planning and
• to join the Covenant of Mayors

By setting up City_SEC in their regions, the municipalities subscribed a “City_SEC strategic paper” that defines the main energy targets they commit to achieve in their territory through City_SEC project collaboration; this strategic paper will be their main guideline in the future actions in the energy field.

Setting up the City_SEC Sustainable Energy Community in Marche Region – June 2010

In this first year of project implementation, partners have promoted a wide range of awareness raising and capitalization activities dedicated to mayors and municipal technicians on energy issues, that contributed to increased knowledge and share understanding among the participants on the main objectives of the CoM, the barriers they will face and the possible solutions to overcome them.

In particular, partners have organized local study tours in neighbourhood communities and one very interesting international study visit to Växjö and Kalmar, in Sweden, that resulted in useful experiences for the participants. Through site visits to concrete actions and power plants implemented by other CoM municipalities, participants had rich opportunities to meet and exchange knowledge with experts and policy makers of municipalities of different EU countries; through the study visits the participants could learn practical and technical issues on energy plants implementation and could build a knowledge on the shaping of policies and actions in the field of energy efficiency.

Images left and below: Study visit in Växjö – February 2011

Moreover, all City_SECs, supported by project partners, joined the European Sustainable Energy Week in April 2011 through the organization of the “City_SEC Zero Emission Days”, a series of training, promotion and dissemination initiatives on the sustainable energy topics organized locally by each SEC and addressing in particular students, young pupils, and the local community as a whole. These initiatives have been a unique opportunity for City_SEC municipalities to locally promote their engagement in the energy policies and their forthcoming adhesion to the Covenant of Mayors.

Along with raising awareness and capacity building activities, project partners are working on definitions of the holistic Energy Baseline Assessment for each of the municipalities involved, providing them with a complete analysis on energy inputs and outputs at municipal level, that will allow administrators to have a clear understanding of the energy needs and the actions to put in place. This activity, especially in some European Countries with less experience in energy data collection and analysis, is proving to be a  very hard task, but at the same time a big challenge and a great opportunity for the municipalities involved.

The most important result of the City_SEC project so far recorded is probably the interest shown by the municipalities involved towards the energy topic, and the new awareness gained that efficient energy planning should be more and more considered as an economic viable path toward growth and sustainability, especially in this period of economic recession. In fact, some municipalities are moving beyond the City_SEC project activities and are evaluating the financial opportunities at European and national level to finance concrete energy actions.