Editorial: Important milestones have already been reached within EnercitEE

Running the Mini-Programme EnercitEE for more than 2 years we can look back on an interesting and successful European journey. Since its start in January 2010 EnercitEE has made some remarkable process. The exchange of experience as core activity of EnercitEE was actively supported by all EnercitEE partners. An important output and result is the jointly developed and finalized Good Practice Guide. It has been developed to demonstrate the energy efficiency potential in the specific areas of competence of the EnercitEE partner regions. It highlights prominent areas of energy efficiency potential, such as buildings, heat/power generation and distribution, transport, innovation and technology, and communication and motivation. In many cases the areas interlink with each other. This shows the need for an integrated planning approach in energy efficiency. Such an approach would make a significant contribution to a sustainable European energy strategy.

Further important milestones within EnercitEE, that fostered the exchange of experience on energy efficiency and climate protection measures, have been three interregional meetings held in the last months. In October 2011 energy experts from all EnercitEE regions met in Wroclaw /Poland for a Policy Advice Seminar. Existing energy efficiency policies and instruments were shared among the partner regions; pros and cons were discussed and the potential for interregional transfer assessed. The 2nd interregional symposium on “Communication and Motivation to increase Energy Efficiency” took place in Annecy/France in February 2012 and dealt with the question how to achieve behavioural change and get cities and citizens actively involved in energy efficiency actions and implement them successfully. The third major event and a premiere within the project was a study trip organised for about 30 mayors from 4 European countries to the City of Växjö/Sweden to learn from “Europe’s greenest city” and their strategy to become fossil fuel free until 2030. This policy maker exchange was thought to inspire participating mayors to test and implement similar strategies and instruments in their communities and counties and also get a chance to exchange experiences with mayors from other EnercitEE regions.

After running successfully two open calls for proposals EnercitEE is financially supporting eleven sub-projects. Half of them are already striving towards the end of their project lifetime in December 2012. So this newsletter proudly presents already achieved outputs and results from 1st call sub-projects and also gives insight information of the progress made in 2nd call sub-projects contributing to the development of energy efficiency measures for citizens and local authorities.

                                     
                                       Katharina Mörl, EnercitEE project coordinator