Monitoring regional and local energy and GHG emissions data is the most crucial step towards identifying priority areas of intervention, and, thus, defining proper regional and local strategies regarding climate and energy.
ENERGee Watch aims to launch a peer-to-peer learning programme to enable regional and local authorities to timely and accurately define, monitor, and verify their sustainable actions. The learning will focus on regional/ provincial authorities and their agencies to empower them to make use of best practices. The project builds, among others, on Covenant of Mayors’ guidelines for Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs), best practices collected through projects on evaluation and verification practices such as the IEE Data4Action, and many others.
The ENERGee Watch project stems from an existing informal European network of regional greenhouse gas (GHG) observatories managed by FEDARENE. The network’s mission is to collect, monitor, report GHG emissions, and implement energy-saving strategies and policies. The network currently has 20 members from 11 European countries who will all, among others, benefit from the project.
The project’s objectives are:
o To develop and execute a complete and easily replicable peer-to-peer learning program.
o To build the capacity of regional authorities in monitoring and verification practices for adaptation and mitigation actions through peer-to-peer learning activities.
o To help public authorities and their agencies use the rich experience available.
o To link regional authorities and their respective associations along with energy policymakers, associations of planners, technical experts, monitoring, verification, reporting (MRV) experts, and local actors in an intra-European network through an innovative peer-to-peer learning experience about local and regional MRV practices for both adaptation and mitigation policies.
The peer learning programme will start in 2021 and will address four topics:
→ Energy and Climate Data collection.
→ Monitoring, Reporting, Verification.
→ TIndicators and planning for climate adaptation.
→ Data display, dissemination and validation by end-users.
Coordinated by the Institute for European Energy and Climate Policy (IEECP), and financed under the EU Horizon 2020 Programme, ENERGee Watch will take place until August 2023.
You can find more information about the project here.