Local authorities are key players in addressing climate change. Since 2008, the European Commission endorses and supports their efforts through the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM) and notably through the provision of capacity building, technical assistance, sharing of best practices and peer learning opportunities. The initiative helps consolidate best practices to monitor and report on energy consumption and GHG emissions as well as on risks and vulnerabilities at the local level, allowing decision makers to identify priority sectors, set emission reduction targets and adaptation goals and plan relevant measures.
This report complements the Covenant of Mayors 2023 Assessment report (Melica et al., 2023), describing the CoM energy activity and estimated savings, based on data for local authorities in EU-27 with a 2030 Commitment declared through the MyCovenant reporting platform, through the Baseline Emission Inventories (BEIs), Monitoring Emission Inventories (MEIs) and actions descriptions. It examines energy consumption and production and offers an overview on the progress made on energy savings and renewable energy generation. As a novelty, this data is complemented in this year’s report with CDP-ICLEI track data for the analysis of actions on renewable energy generation.
Achievements in energy savings and renewable energy generation
Overall, fossil fuels have the greatest weight in total consumption, followed by electricity, and district heating and cooling with a low share. Lastly, the minimum share is that of renewable fuels, suggesting that the transition to a greener energy system still requires more time and additional efforts to achieve EU targets. In particular, the analysed data shows that non-renewable energy has the highest share, with 98.67%, representing almost the totality of the BEI heat/cold consumption for the local authorities reporting local heat/cold production. Meanwhile, the sector with the highest share in the reported consumption is stationary energy (especially the subsector of residential buildings), followed by transport, where private and commercial transport are especially significant.
Regarding local electricity production, the highest shares in the baseline emission inventories correspond to photovoltaics, whereas other sources such as combined heat and power (CHP), hydroelectric power, and wind power follow at a significant distance. Considering local heat/cold production, the highest shares correspond to district heating (heat only) and CHP, using mostly non-renewable energy sources and covering a high percentage of the entire heat/cold baseline consumption.
Based on the analysis of the (1 317) BEIs with reported data on estimated energy savings, signatories aim to achieve a reduction of 3.96 MWh/year per capita, mainly focused on the stationary and the transport sector. This is complemented by a renewable energy production estimation that focuses mainly on local electricity production and stationary energy, which would achieve 1.17 MWh/year per capita.
The key findings show that the energy savings that were accomplished by 639 signatories, looking at the difference between BEI and MEI, amount to 45.7 TWh/year, which correspond to 1.98 MWh/year per capita. On the other hand, the 174 signatories reporting data on renewable energy generation in their BEI and MEI, reported in BEI the production of 14.15 TWh/year (1.3 MWh/year per capita) and in MEI, 12.4 TWh/year (1.07 MWh/year per capita).