Dec 18th, 2019, 10:00 CET

By setting ambitious Climate & Energy targets for 2030 and 2050, the European Union has positioned itself as a leader in the fight against Climate Change. The designated president of the new EU Commission has announced the fight against climate change to be of utmost importance striving for a carbon neutral continent by 2050. Yet, for achieving carbon neutrality, fulfilling the Paris Agreement, close cooperation across all levels of government and civil society is essential. After all, the success of the climate and energy transition depends on the ability to involve sub-national authorities to manage this change, starting with the best practices, but also understanding local limitations and obstacles. But how can local climate action be planned for? What governance framework is needed? And how can cities and regions move forward with implementing ambitious climate action?

To support local governments in long term energy and climate planning is precisely the goal of the C-Track 50 project, which aims to mobilize and guide public authorities and to support them in developing, financing and implementing ambitious integrated sustainable energy and climate policy action plans. In this, C-track 50 supports at least 116 sustainable energy and climate policy action plans and develops more than 105 funding proposals for implementing sustainable energy and climate actions/projects.

The first of two C-Track 50 webinars was completed successfully on the 18th of December. Cities and regions at the forefront of local action in Europe were reperesented by the speakers and the attendees had the chance to deepen their knowledge about the recent EU and global energy and climate policy, as well as get inspired by exemplar sustainable energy projects, discovering new tools and best practices in energy and climate plans to achieve carbon neutrality.

Agenda

1. Introduction by Alexandra Papadopoulou, National Technical University of Athens 
2. Post-COP25: a local governments’ perspective by Roberto Rinaldi, Committee of the Regions
3. Sustainable Tampere 2030 by Elina Seppänen, City of Tampere
4. The experience in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region by Catherine Premat, AURA-EE
5. The experience of the Municipality of Chania by Dr. Charalampos Litos
6. Q&A session

The recording of the webinar can be found here.