The unequivocal response from Energy Cities to the EU Energy Efficieny Plan.

According to Energy Cities, after the Fukushima catastrophe and the soaring energy prices, the days when we delayed urgent decisions are definitely gone. We now have to move decidedly towards a decentralised, democratic and responsible energy system that citizens will comprehend.

That is how to sum up the response from Energy Cities to the EU Energy Efficiency Plan.
This opinion was officially adopted during the General Meeting held on Thursday, April 7th in Zagreb, in the frame of the Annual Rendezvous of the network.

Such a system more than ever requires a greater and greater involvement of local authorities in the setting up and implementation of energy policies in order to give a significantly wider room to decentralised policies based on energy efficiency, energy savings and the use of local renewable resources.

So how can we reach our objectives? How can national governments help local authorities transform their objectives into reality?

This question was the thread of the discussions of the strategy session organized during Energy Cities Annual Rendezvous, in the framework of the IEE-funded Energy Efficiency Watch 2 project. The main objective of the initiative is to facilitate the implementation of the Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services Directive [2006/32/EC] across the EU. Representatives of European lobbying associations, of local authorities, national ministries and mayors discussed how multi-level governance should and does already partially work in the field of energy efficiency.

All the participants of this session expressed the need for giving a higher priority to energy efficiency, still deploring the lack of cooperation between national governments and the local level, and stating that our success will depend on a real dialogue between the different levels. This is also the opinion of Gérard Magnin, Executive Director of Energy Cities, who underlines that:
« The answer is in the hands of national governments who are stuck in bureaucratic exercises without consulting the actors of their own territory. »