Synchronising local energy and climate initiatives to increase global impact
Municipalities across Europe are enthusiastic about developing energy and climate initiatives that support their ‘’clean’’, decarbonisation plans, but they are struggling to effectively implement them. Many instruments supporting local authorities have been developed over the past couple of decades, but currently the results, data and reports are often not transferrable or linked. The EU-funded CoME EASY project has systematically linked and synthesised such procedures and tools. Together with new comprehensive user-friendly ICT tools, municipalities will be better assisted to develop, monitor and achieve their energy and climate goals.
The European Energy Award, the Covenant of Mayors and more
The European Energy Award (eea) is a quality management and awarding system. In existence for over 25 years, the eea is now implemented in more than 1 700 cities and towns, representing 65 million inhabitants in 15 countries. The eea Energy Management Tool and its standard measures are used for determining awards. Thanks to CoME EASY, it now provides support for International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 50.001 and 14.001 reporting standards. The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is the world’s largest movement for local climate and energy actions. Launched by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy in 2008, CoM now includes more than 9 000 local and regional authorities across 57 countries. CoME EASY has harmonised these two important instruments. “The eea signed a Memorandum of Understanding with CoM in 2019 recognising the eea’s excellence as an implementation tool for the CoM,” notes Chiara Tavella of SPES Consulting and CoME EASY project coordinator.
An open ICT tools package for municipal energy and climate initiatives
CoME EASY’s new tools comprise calculators to determine emission and consumption inventories and mitigation actions’ impacts; reporting facilitators; benchmarking tools; guidelines for stakeholders’ engagement; and training materials. Tavella adds: “All these methodologies are aimed at improving the quality of life of EU citizens and require their engagement. The guideline for stakeholders’ and citizens’ engagement can be used by city planners to accomplish this challenging task.” The CoME EASY platform is hosted on the eea online platform to ensure it will be updated after the project end. It is linked to eea’s Energy Management Tool, and access is freely available upon request.
Harmonised energy and climate initiatives amplify impact
Tavella summarises: “CoME EASY has successfully aligned the eea with CoM, the international energy management system standard ISO 50.001 and other initiatives thanks to standardised information that can be easily exported to multiple IT programmes.” The project was awarded as the best methodology for sustainable policies monitoring by FORUM PA 2021. Forum PA is Italy’s most important event dedicated to innovation for the Public Administration (PA), organised in association with the INTERLINK project. The alignment is bringing energy and climate initiatives together and builds local momentum. More than 180 municipalities were supported in the roll-out. The small town of Montaione in Italy, for example, is an eea Gold municipality that used tools to develop a social, environmental and climate assessment procedure that fulfils ISO 50.001 and 14.001 audits. It was awarded as the best plan for small municipalities by CoM in 2020. Now that mutual recognition among initiatives has been achieved, the eea and CoM are working towards automatic exchange of data. Thanks to CoME EASY, municipalities can get on the fast track without getting side-tracked on their road to effective climate policies for 2030 2050.
Keywords
CoME EASY, energy, eea, climate, CoM, municipalities, ISO, ICT, Covenant of Mayors, Energy Management Tool, European Energy Award
