Engaging Small Communities in the Clean Energy Transition: Results from the LIFE LOCAL GoGREEN Project

Achieving Europe's mid-term decarbonisation targets by 2030 is an ambitious path for local authorities. However, small and rural municipalities face several barriers, including structural, institutional and economic challenges. To facilitate the achievement of decarbonisation targets, it is essential to strengthen local capacities through targeted support. The European LIFE22-CET LOCAL GoGREEN project is aimed to accelerate the clean energy transition in six small communities across Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Germany, and Spain. It supports them in developing strategic actions in five key areas: sustainable transport and e-mobility, energy efficiency in buildings, renewable energy expansion, land-use planning for carbon sequestration, and waste-to-energy solutions. This is achieved through a range of activities, including stakeholder engagement, local capacity building, providing analytical tools for energy planning, conducting pre-feasibility studies, and developing roadmaps and action plans. This presentation will present the groundwork for the preparation of action plans and feasibility studies by the pilot cities, i.e. the characterisation of the state of the art from an energy and planning perspective. It will focus in particular on self-assessments carried out by the pilot cities according to a common template, a database of their current climate and energy plans and programmes, and a common set of key indicators to characterise their planning performance. The results obtained so far show a two-speed behaviour in the planning practices of small municipalities across Europe, with lagging municipalities able to learn and adopt good practices from the leading examples in the project (horizontal mainstreaming).