Proposals demonstrating an innovative approach in empowering public authorities to develop, finance and implement ambitious sustainable energy policies and plans (for instance under the Covenant of Mayors initiative), on the basis of reliable data and analyses. Public actors should be encouraged to look at sectors with high energy saving potential such as buildings, industry and urban mobility. The geographical coverage should be well justified on the basis of European added-value. Capacity building should be an integral part of project proposals.

The following actions are part of the scope:

  • Raising the capacity of Member States to fulfil their obligation under the new Energy Efficiency Directive.
  • Enabling national energy regulatory authorities to address demand issues (e.g. demand response, tariff design, assessment of generation adequacy assessment).
  • Capacity building on integrated energy, transport mobility and land-use planning at community and city-level.
  • Supporting public authorities in better linking up local, regional and national levels for delivering integrated sustainable energy action planning and projects to achieve synergies and economies of scale.
  • Establishing new or exploiting existing networks and other mechanisms to spread knowledge and facilitating the exchange of experiences and best practice on sustainable energy.
  • Large-scale capacity building on innovative financing to specific groups of public authorities, such as national, local and regional authorities, energy agencies, structural and cohesion funds managing authorities.
  • Defining and implementing standard energy saving packages for households, public sector and industry in particular under Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive.

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