On 25 May Focus, CAN Europe, RAC France, DOOR and CDE organised an online conference: “Good practices of municipal climate and energy action– from development to implementation”.

More than 40 representatives from municipalities, public administration, energy and development agencies and NGOs from Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, France and other countries participated to the event, discussing how to raise the capacity of municipalities to develop and increase ambition of SECAPs and accelerate the implementation of ambitious local climate and energy measures. 

The first part of the event was focused on good practices in developing SECAPs, where lack of technical and financial capacity of municipalities to develop SECAPs were identified as main barriers. In the Slovenian case, presented during the conference, connecting municipalities through development and energy agencies and securing funding through EU projects helped smaller municipalities develop their own SECAPs. Additionally, tools such as ones developed by RAC France for local governments to develop, implement and monitor climate policies can have great potential by allowing easier monitoring and integration of data. The discussion showed that effective participation of citizens is crucial for developing ambitious SECAPs tailored to the needs of citizens.

In the second part of the event, we focused on good practices of SECAPs implementation. Accessibility of continuous co-financing from the EU, as well as the lack of legal obligations stemming from SECAPs in many countries (and the lack of consequences thereof, in case of misimplementation) have been identified as main barriers for ambitious implementation. On the other hand, the 3 good practices that were presented – the Prague climate plan and energy community, the cycling policy in Grenoble-Alpes Métropole and the establishment of the energy cooperative and community solar power plant in Hrastnik – show that well planned local measures can have positive effects in terms of mitigation of climate change, while also having positive impact on the quality of life of citizens.

All presentations from the event can be found at this link.