Taking place last week from 6-8th April in the city of Zagreb, the event gathered representatives of cities and local energy agencies, of European associations as well as of national and regional institutions.
A critical look at what happened in the last year was followed by practical city experiences from all over Europe on three main topics : participation, territorial cohesion and financing.
During the General Assembly, the network adopted Energy Cities’ opinion paper as a response to the EU’s Energy Efficiency Plan.
It calls for binding targets, a stronger focus on decentralised systems and a much more democratic and responsible energy system that citizens can understand. Energy efficiency was also at the core of the Friday morning strategy session : high-level representatives from EU lobbying associations, from national and regional ministries and three city Mayors discussed how multi-level governance should and does already partially work in the field.
At the same occasion, Energy Cities’ Board of Directors was renewed. Its composition has slightly changed with the following 11 members : Delft (NL), Brussels Capital (BE), Villa Nova da Gaia (PT), Paris (FR), Heidelberg (DE), Växjö (SE), Bielsko-Biala (PL), Brasov (RO), Helsinki (FI), Figueres (ES), Leicester (UK). A warm welcome to this new Board which will represent the 1,000 members of Energy Cities for the next two years !
We are particularly pleased that Heidelberg was reelected President of the network. Congratulations to Eckart Würzner (picture on the left) and his team.
Almost 100 “Do it yourself” posters featuring innovative cities actions were exhibited during the conference. Three of them were awarded during the Zagreb Cities Grand Prix for being original, inspiring and attractive : Cork (IE), Sutton (UK) and Agueda (PT). All posters can be found in the on-line gallery.
All conference presentations, pictures and documents are available online here
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