At the end of 2011 the Initial CLIPART Report was ready, basically in the form of a wiki web site (clipartwiki.wikispaces.com).

An edited and more readable version of the ICR is due within June 2012, in the form a pdf file downloadable from the EnercitEE CLIPART web page www.enercitee.eu/CLIPART. By the end of 2012 also the Final Report (the CLIPART Handbook, as we dub it) will be ready. The present draft is already more than 100 pages, and a first “editing tour” just started, so that a final draft will be ready early next autumn. The Handbook will be available in English but also in at least four other European languages (i.e. Italian, German, French and Polish) to enhance its circulation in the countries of the CLIPART partners and possibly others.
But what are these reports about? The ICR contains a collection of 51 examples of existing know-how and best practices about climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives and/or energy and environmental policies from the five project partners at their level of governance (regions and/or local authorities).

Building on this existing knowledge, and on extensive internal discussion and confrontation with local authorities, staff and stakeholders, a general procedure for climate change planning and implementation for regional and local administrators was devised and is described in the CLIPART Handbook (final CLIPART report).

The Handbook includes three main chapters, the first is a general introduction to the anthropogenic climate change issue and its relevance for local administrators and planners, while the following two chapters describe in detail how to make plans for mitigation and adaptation. The description of tools and procedure is given in detail with plenty of reference to web sites and literature. An extensive climate glossary is also provided.

The mitigation and adaptation keywords are essential to grasp for policy makers: mitigation stands for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions basically through energy efficiency measures and substitution of fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy, having lower or no impact on the planet’s climate; adaptation instead means evaluating risks due to climate change foreseen in the near and not-so-near future and planning for reducing and managing the impacts of the changing climate on health society economy and nature at large.

Up to now the cooperation between the five CLIPART partners was excellent, fruitful and also enjoyable. Working in a weather service as I do, I can then forecast a brilliant outcome of our EnercitEE sub-project!