Energee-Watch

The European Network of Regional GhG Emissions and Energy Watch

The overall aim of Energee-Watch is to launch a peer to peer learning program to enable regional and local authorities to timely and accurately define, monitor and verify their sustainable actions. The learning will focus on regional/provincial authorities and their agencies that are responsible for collecting and overseeing the monitoring of mitigation and adaptation measure indicators in order to empower them to make use of best practices.

From previous surveys with regional authorities, energy agencies, local authorities we knew there were many needs around energy and climate data. That is where the idea of the project came from. To offer a targeted programme to local, regional authorities and their agencies, the Energee Watch project foresaw as one of its first activity to carry out a needs assessment exercise. A survey was launched at the end of 2020 to identify the needs and barriers, public authorities and their support organisations face in developing and monitoring their energy and climate plans. The first overall analysis of the 53 answers from 42 organisations showed strong needs in most topics for each learning course. It led us to carry out an analysis per type of organisations to better understand the needs of each type of organisation and how to best meet these needs through the Energee Watch learning programme.

ENERGee WATCH has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N° 892089. The content of this page is for information purpose only. The relevant legal instruments and the text of the call shall take precedence over the information contained in this page. The European Commission or EASME does not accept responsibility for any use made of the information contained therein.

Executive summary

Courses and needs from different organisations.
The group of local authorities showed a stronger need in Course 1 “Energy Data collection (acquisition and treatment)” with an average percentage of 32,7%. Conversely, the target group of local authorities presents the least strong need for Course 3 (“Indicators and strategies on adaptation to Climate Change”) with an average percentage of 29,8% of all participants representing a local authority.
The group of energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities showed a stronger need in Course 3 “Indicators and strategies on adaptation to Climate Change” with an average percentage of 51,8%.

Topics within each group and interest from organisations
The analysis was split in 3 groups:
• Local authorities
• Provincial/regional authorities and energy agencies
• Other (consultants, NGOs)

For the learning course 1 on Energy data collection (treatment and acquisition)
For local authorities, the vast majority of the topics addressed in this course follow the same trends, meaning that there is substantial need for learning in these topics. The topic of “Transport” presents an exception to this by having 32% of all participants that expressed limited need for further learning. The topics that present the strongest need are the following:

Data Management (36%)
Waste (35%)
Technical tools and calculation methods for data analysis (35%)

While for provincial/regional authorities and energy agencies results show different trends. First of all, they show less needs for capacity building in these topics than local authorities and the most needed topics are also very different:

Transport (59%)
Strategy and Framework for Energy and Climate targets (50%)
Private Buildings/Energy Renovation/Energy Poverty (50%)

For learning Course 2 on Monitoring, Reporting, Verification: follow-up of implementation of actions
For local authorities, all the topics addressed in this course are characterised by a strong need for further learning and in particular the following ones:

Reporting (35%)
Internal Capacity (31%),
Data quality is following (28%) and the least strong needs are reported by local authorities when it comes to developing indicators and monitoring (27%)

While the energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities prove to have less need for further learning in this course than local authorities and the most needed topics are also very different:

Developing indicators and monitoring (56%)
Data quality (53%)

For learning course 3 on Indicators and strategies on adaptation to climate change
Many of the topics addressed in this course follow the same trends, meaning that there is substantial need for learning in these topics for local authorities. It is noteworthy that local authorities expressed by 50% no need for further learning regarding the topic of “Development of climate adaptation indicators for diagnosis and assessment”. They also stated no need by 30% when it comes to “tools and methods facilitating the development of a climate adaptation plan”.
The most needed topics are:

Space planning of the challenges: pressure or cooperation on environments and between stakeholders (32%)
Governance and response plan to be put in place for your community (31%)

The energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities present limited needs in further learning across all topics of this course. Specifically, for the categories of “Development of climate adaptation indicators for diagnosis and assessment” and “Climate adaptation solutions investigation” they present much stronger need for further learning, when compared to the percentage of the “No need” answers.

Climate adaptation solutions investigation (56%)
Tools and methods to facilitate the development of a climate adaptation plan (56%)

For the learning course 4 on Data display, dissemination and validation by end-users, all target groups agree that the focus should be put mainly on “General data management and visualisation methods” (33% from the local authorities and 48% from the energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities.

Objectives

Build capacity of regional authorities in monitoring and verification practices for adaptation and mitigation actions
Run the ENERGee Watch peer-to-peer learning programme funded by the EU H2020 Programme
Share experiences and best practices in data collection, monitoring, verification and dissemination of energy and climate data amongst GHG monitoring organisations, local and regional authorities
Further improve the replicability and comparability of measurement and verification practices