Investigating urban sustainable energy policies in Europe: experiences from the Covenant of Mayors

Local governments play a crucial role in reducing GHG emissions. In order to endorse and support the efforts of local authorities, in 2008 the European Commission launched the Covenant of Mayors (CoM). Covenant signatories commit to reduce CO2 by at least 20% in 2020, to prepare a Baseline Emission Inventory (BEI) and to submit a Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP). The BEI is a quantification of the amount of CO2 emitted due to energy consumption in the territory of a Covenant signatory within a given period of time. It allows identifying the principal sources of CO2 emissions and their respective reduction potentials. The SEAP is the key document in which the Covenant signatory outlines how it intends to reach its CO2 reduction target. It defines the activities and measures set up to achieve the target, together with time frames and assigned responsibilities. Each SEAP include a list of actions for reducing emissions and the quantification of their intended emission reductions. The paper is structured as follows: i) analysis of baseline emissions and intended emission reductions distribution for emissive sectorial sources; ii) assessment of the most relevant categories of actions to reduce emissions and policy instruments in the achievement of reduction targets; iii) analysis of the drivers influencing emissions and intended emission reductions strategies in cities. The analysis is based on data provided by a subset of cities participating at the Covenant ofMayors initiative. The cities included in the sample have been selected based on their size and on the SEAP acceptance status: all European cities with more than 100.000 inhabitants and with an accepted SEAP by February 2014 are included in the study. More than 5.400 actions planned by cities are analysed. They have been classified based on their official description into a “category of action” (area of intervention targeted by an action) and into a “policy lever” (instrument used by the local authority to implement the action). Most relevant actions in terms of recurrence and mitigation impact are individuated. Cities are then categorized according to a set of features (Population size, Heating Degree Days (HDD), GDP per capita, Population density, Geographical area and Electricity Emission Factor (EEF)), to verify if these features influence cities’ emissions and cities’ reduction strategies. Cities in the sample account for a total of 370 Mton of CO2 emissions for selected baseline years and 94 Mton of intended reductions of yearly emissions, to be reached by 2020. The total level of emission reduction planned by cities corresponds to 25% of baseline emissions in the sample. The results of the analysis show that the distribution of intended emission reductions is coherent with the weight of emissions for different sectors. Building and Transport stand out as the most relevant sectors for emission reductions in SEAPs. Local electricity production is a very promising sector while the industrial sector (non-ETS) is expected to yield a minor contribution to the overall target, despite its relevance in the BEI.