From planning to financing and successful implementation of sustainable energy solutions, public authorities have varying levels of knowledge, skills, and capacity, as well as several needs. In 2017, an extensive study conducted by the European Covenant of Mayors Office showed that local and regional authorities need support on collecting, monitoring and verifying data for their climate and energy plans. Policies for monitoring and verification are often formed on a national level, and cities oftentimes do not have the capacity for setting up proper MRV practices and do not properly monitor the impact of their policies and implemented actions.
ENERGee Watch launched a peer-to-peer learning programme to enable regional and local authorities to timely and accurately define, monitor, and verify their sustainable actions as well as to strengthen collaboration and engagement among them. The learning focused on regional/provincial authorities and their agencies that are responsible for collecting and overseeing the monitoring of mitigation and adaptation measure indicators in order to empower them to make use of best practices. The project builds on the successful H2020 PROSPECT project and goes one step further by enabling accurate and successful data collection, dissemination and validation, monitoring and verification practices, and proper monitoring indicators in cities and regions across the EU. ENERGee Watch is an existing informal European network of regional greenhouse gas observatories managed by FEDARENE whose mission is to collect, monitor, report GHG Emissions and implement energy saving strategies and policies, to which the project brings this already existing informal network to a higher level by achieving specific and strategic objectives.
The specific objectives of ENERGee Watch were:
1. To develop and execute a complete and easily replicable peer to peer learning program addressing regional authorities or their associations and agencies. In this way, by building capacity of regional authorities, the project could reach a few hundred of their cities and local members through the passing down of knowledge.
2. To create effective and productive peer-to-peer groups among regional and local authorities and agencies within and outside consortium partners, in order to ensure the exchange of experience and expertise on MRV.
3. To build partnerships that will stimulate mutual understanding of each other’s issues, situations and challenges with the aim of exploring new ideas, options and solutions.
4. To further improve the replicability and comparability of measurement and verification practices through empowering mentors and strengthening their knowledge.
5. To identify and set up a proper replication mechanism for the learning programs available to regions/cities beyond the consortium network and the project’s duration.
