Engaging and activating public authorities

a) Actions aiming at engaging public authorities – open in 2016/2017

Proposals demonstrating an innovative approach in empowering public authorities to step up their active role to develop, finance and implement ambitious sustainable energy plans and measures (for instance by capitalising on synergies with the Covenant of Mayors or Smart Cities & Communities or similar public initiatives), on the basis of reliable data. Public actors are encouraged to adopt a multi-stakeholder approach and to look at sectors with high energy saving potential such as buildings, industry and urban mobility, as well as to take into consideration the integration of relevant indoor environment quality[[Indoor environmental quality includes aspects of thermal and visual comfort, acoustics, air quality, etc.]] criteria regulations when increasing energy efficiency performance of buildings.

Proposals should focus on one of the following topics:

• Raising the capacity of Member States to fulfil their obligation under the Energy Efficiency Directive, Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, Ecodesign and Labelling Directives (e.g. monitoring on the energy efficiency progress and policies)
• Innovative ways to enable public engagement in the energy transition, developing interface capacities within public authorities to engage with civil society
• Supporting public authorities to foster integrated energy, transport mobility and land-use planning at local level
• Supporting public authorities to foster multi-level governance, linking up local, regional and national levels for delivering integrated sustainable energy planning and projects to achieve synergies and economies of scale
• Enhance and create appropriate structures for rolling-out quality management and certification schemes for energy efficiency/renewable energy targeted in municipalities, as well as supporting collaboration between scheme operators to attract a higher number of municipalities.
• Developing financing strategies for capital-intensive technologies for heating and cooling (e.g. heat pumps).

b) Peer to peer learning for public authorities - step up public authorities' capacity to help deliver the energy transition – open in 2016/2017

Support will be provided to facilitating organisations which are identifying the peer-learning potential and facilitating in-depth exchange across Europe. Facilitating organisation consortia will involve the Local and Regional Energy Agencies and other relevant actors and will be in charge of i) developing and implementing a transparent and effective identification and matching process, based on evident needs and mutual benefits of potential participant as well as on successful sustainable energy projects and measures; ii) assessing the replication potential and delivering a replication plan (peer-learning plan) including documenting the results and impacts in an easily accessible format for wider application; iii) organising the peer-learning exchanges; iv) defining the learning objectives and expected impacts and; v) proactively disseminating and ensuring further replication of results (e.g. replication strategy) beyond the participating public authorities and Member States.

Proposals should provide indicative cost data structure for the set-up, facilitation and running of the exchange programmes including the specific cost per exchange.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 1 and 2 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Due to their spending power and pivotal role within the community, the public sector is an important driver in supporting a market transformation towards more efficient energy systems, buildings, products, services and towards stimulating a general public behaviour for increased uptake of energy efficiency solutions.

One of the key challenges remains in linking up public bodies at the national, regional and local level through effective multi-level governance to realise an energy transition driven from the local level with concerted planning and implementation of energy projects, as well as in achieving a coherent transformation of the energy system capitalising on synergies and economies of scale.

The proposed actions are expected to demonstrate the impacts listed below:

• Primary energy savings, renewable energy production and investments in sustainable energy triggered in the territory of participating parties by the project within its duration (respectively in GWh/year and million Euro of investments per million Euro of EU funding); (for a & b)
• Number of integrated plans, vertically and or horizontally (for a)
• Number of certified municipalities (for a)
• Number of consumers/stakeholders engaged with their Public Authority (for a)
• Policies and strategies created/adapted to include sustainable energy issues at all governance levels (to be measured in Number of citations / statements from governance bodies) (for a)
• Public authorities with increased skills/capability/competencies on energy issues (to be measured in number of people with increased capacity) (for b)
• Policies and strategies created/adapted (to be measured in number of newly institutionalised energy policies and/or plans in learning public authorities) (for b)
• Number of relationships established between public authorities (for b).