Abou the project
OwnYourSECAP is a European LIFE-2021-CET-LOCAL project.
It runs from September 2022 to September 2025 in 11 countries.
The main project website can be found here.
Origin of the project
To date, most local authorities have prepared their climate plans – PCAET in France, SEAP and SECAP (the Covenant of Mayors’ climate plans) – with outside help and are not directly involved in the preparation process, and ultimately do not feel that they « own » the plan. This has a major influence on the subsequent implementation of the SECAP. At the same time, there are authorities that are leaders and experienced in energy and climate planning, but their numbers are still too small and greater efforts need to be made to bring other authorities up to their level, particularly small and medium-sized authorities. In addition, one of the biggest barriers identified by all local authorities is the lack of an energy manager.
To address these issues, Own Your SECAP is building on the resources developed in previous projects, such as the 50000&1 SEAPs (IEE) and the Compete4SECAP project (H2020), working on energy management issues and action plans with different means of animation, such as municipal energy saving competitions.
Project objectives
In order to effectively assist Local Authorities (and building on all previous projects), the OwnYourSECAP project aims to:
- Directly engage 44 local authorities to develop or update their Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) with ambitious targets for climate neutrality in 2050 with measures on mitigation, adaptation and energy poverty,
- Directly empower at least 44 local authorities to implement their SECAPs by institutionalising integrated energy planning in their communities,
- Set up and fully certify energy management systems (EnMS) (cf. ISO 50001) for 22 local authorities and integrate the precepts of EnMS into the management of energy and climate policies.
- integrating and developing adaptation to climate change and climate budgets
- Facilitate energy and climate monitoring by using an easy-to-use ICT energy monitoring platform to collect reliable data,
- Create clear governance structures to implement the plans.
- Améliorer l’autonomie aux Collectivités pour la mise en oeuvre de leurs plans d’actions
- Organise capacity-building and peer-to-peer (P2P) activities, including tailored assistance, discussion platforms for policy makers and public officials, replication and best practices
- Invest in sustainable energy and climate actions
- Secure support and resources for the implementation of 528 SECAP measures to ensure a more systematic approach to the implementation of SECAP measures
- Enable at least 66 local authorities to replicated, through peer-to-peer activities, all or part of the OwnYourSECAP activities, including the development and/or implementation of SECAP and/or EnMS
- Ensure a specific territorial focus on innovative processes for integrating climate into the municipal budgets of 88 local authorities, i.e. the application of climate budgets and the allocation and monitoring of resources for climate actions in municipal budgets,
- To ensure that at least 400 stakeholders across Europe with an intrinsic interest or mandate in building the capacity of local authorities are directly and qualitatively informed about the OwnYourSECAP guidelines,
- Disseminate to at least 500,000 people among the target groups the experiences of implementing SECAP measures, the EnMS, the capacities and the guidance documents developed to enable replication on a European scale,
- Demonstrate that quality management and certification schemes for improved energy performance (energy efficiency and renewables) as well as integrated energy and climate planning and management can capitalise on synergies and scale in the public sector for the benefit of local authorities and their stakeholders, in particular CoM Signatories, Supporters and Coordinators,
- Reduce energy waste and related CO2 emissions, increase the share of renewables in end-use energy production, achieve cost savings as well as socio-economic and environmental benefits, including climate adaptation, and thus progress towards a coherent transformation of municipal energy systems.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Life programme under grant agreement no. 101077109. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the OwnYourSECAP project and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union.