Brussels, 25 June – The EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has announced that half of the Covenant of Mayors’ 5,049 municipalities have submitted sustainable energy action plans. The JRC has analysed 1,340 of the plans so far, and found that 82% of them have been approved. Only 7.8% of the plans were rejected because they did not comply with criteria set out for them.
Brussels, 25 June – The EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has announced that half of the Covenant of Mayors’ 5,049 municipalities have submitted sustainable energy action plans. The JRC has analysed 1,340 of the plans so far, and found that 82% of them have been approved. Only 7.8% of the plans were rejected because they did not comply with criteria set out for them.
All signatories pledge to reduce their CO2 emissions by at least 20% by 2020 by putting in place abatement measures, monitoring progress and submitting implementation reports. Around 63% of signatories have pledged to reduce CO2 by more than 20%. The plans approved so far will make savings of around 97.1 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, rising to a predicted 373 million tonnes should all signatories carry through with their actions.
Further analysis by the JRC shows that around 30% of planned actions involve the building sector and 18% involve changing behaviour. Other popular measures include local energy production, land-use planning, and transport. In total, these measures are expected to cost €50-100billion (depending on the final number of submitted plan), with financial support available from the European Investment Bank’s ELENA (European Local ENergy Assistance) fund and the Intelligent Energy Europe programme.
For more information, see the Covenant of Mayors website.