Local authorities showed an interest in the Covenant initiative and were actively discussing the possibilities of its implementation within the national and local conditions. They appreciated the logical structure of the Covenant procedure favoring at first the adaptation or creation of adequate administrative structures and allocation of human resources (e.g. Covenant coordinator). These would then allow for professional development of Baseline Emissions Inventory (BEI) and Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) in cooperation with local actors and citizens and its financing.
The workshop was sprinkled with many valuable concrete examples concerning the BEI and SEAP development presented by the representatives of the Nitra Energy Agency (Slovakia) - Ladislav Ondrejicka, Direcor and Jana Kuciakova, Project Manager. The agency had been gathering data and developing its own BEI and SEAP for more than one year before the SEAP was submitted to the Covenant of Mayors Office.
Ladislav Ondrejicka emphasised that ‚the investments in energy management are ones with the fastest payback and are very rentable‘. He also presented several possibilities to find the financial sources for starting up the energy management at local level, one of them being: ‚first, you need to find one person who would deal with the energy issues, in couple of months this person would be surely able to achieve first energy and financial savings – able to pay his/her post‘.
Thus, the Czech local authorities discovered the requirements but also benefits of the Covenant. Through the example of Nitra they saw that it’s implementation is feasible not only in the EU-15 member states (having many years experiences in energy management and maybe ‚more favorable conditions‘) but also within the conditions of the ‚new member states‘- often perceived as much less favorable.
Participants were highly interested in innovative financing schemes set up in different cities from abroad, such as intracting method from Stuttgart, project pooling experienced by the cities of Dijon and Brest when purchasing together the low energy trams or municipal subsidies for households provided by the city of Dunkerque.
The interest to exchange on energy issues with other cities and learn from each other seems to be growing in the Czech Republic and Energy Cities in cooperation with its collective member HCCZ or new partners, such as Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic, will do everything to help them.
All presentations and photos from the workshop, in Czech language, can be found at: www.zdravamesta.cz/workshop-CoM
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