EU 2020 Strategy: Energy Cities' opinion paper

By Miriam Eisermann on 1 July 2010

The European Union is preparing a new energy strategy for 2011-2020. Energy Cities believes that this is a crucial moment to give a strong signal and trigger the right, innovative actions for the coming years. According to its final shape, this Europe 2020 Strategy can be an important accompanying policy process guiding political decision-makers.

Energy Cities has contributed to the public consultation initiated by the European Commission. In our political opinion paper, we propose to:

• Introduce a new Community Instrument: ‘URBAN – Sustainable Energy’’: Based on the successful ‘’URBAN’’ Community Initiative of the European Regional Development Fund, this instrument should be set up as a support programme for the cities engaged in the Covenant of Mayors. Covenant of Mayors signatories have committed, on a voluntary basis, to contribute to the achievement of the binding commitments Member States and EU have taken in the framework of the Energy and Climate Package. Covenant Signatories should be rewarded with relevant technical and financial support. This new initiative could partly be fed by ETS auction sales. With regards to the procedure, direct contracts between the European Commission and Cities would be the most favourable solution and they could be signed on the basis of the Cities’ Sustainable Energy Action Plans.

• Empower local authorities with financial engineering assistance to implement energy-efficient projects: The access to finance, both public and private, is relying on increasingly complex procedures. As a result, a substantial amount of the available funding remains unused whilst expectations from cities for financial support remain high in order to implement sustainable energy projects. The European Local Energy Assistance (ELENA) facility demonstrates how technical assistance for developing bankable projects is paramount to trigger investment in sustainable energy at regional or metropolitan level. Building on the success of ELENA, it is crucial to create an instrument that puts all local authorities, whatever their size, and local banks in a position to apply for such a financial engineering assistance facility at a large scale and in a decentralised manner. As a matter of fact, the ‘’114+ M€‘’ from the unspent money of the EU Economic Recovery Plan offers an exceptional opportunity for initiating a ‘’network’’ of local, regional and national banks that would support sustainable energy projects in cities. Beyond the EIB instruments, cities need to see a practical return for their commitment. They all must be in a situation to use this facility by themselves and/or with their principal banks.

• Initiate a public forum on the EU Energy Strategy through the prism of territorial cohesion

EU leaders are expected to come to a formal agreement in March 2011. Once the details of this new strategy are agreed upon, it will shape all the EU’s legislative work in the energy sector until 2020.

Read the Energy Cities Position Paper

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