CITY2CITY: EXPERIENCE EXCHANGE SUPPORT FOR MUNICIPALITIES
In October 2018, a new exchange program City2City was launched by the CoM East project team. Specific objectives of the program are to establish the platform for sharing experience between municipalities and to familiarize CoM Signatories with the best practices in energy efficiency, sustainable energy development and adaptation to climate change policy through a series of study visits of two different levels – political (mayors/deputy mayors) and technical (energy managers). The program is expected to boost knowledge of its participants in thematic clusters covering the key sectors of SE(C)APs.
Implementation of the “political” component of City2City program started with a study tour of 18 representatives of CoM Signatories from the EaP countries to Riga and Jelgava (Latvia) on March, 18-22, 2019. These cities were selected as the most progressive municipalities among new EU members. It is indeed considered that Eastern European countries had the same starting point and the gap in energy development is not crucial, thus the experience and solutions of Riga and Jelgava can be replicated in EaP region. To ensure the most efficient information exchange environment between the study visit participants, its agenda included face-to-face meetings and direct communication with representatives of local authorities of the host cities, as well as site visits and meetings with the management and staff of facilities where respective sustainable energy and climate projects have been successfully implemented.
Within the “technical” component, two study visits were organised in Ukraine – to Zhovkva on October17-19, 2018 (small cities) and to Slavutych on October 24-26, 2018 (medium-size municipalities) – for 10 representatives of CoM Signatories who met eligibility criteria and demonstrated high interest in capacity building activities. Participants got acquainted with the process of development and implementation of sustainable energy development policy, learned the basics of energy management and energy monitoring systems, studied the practices of investment projects implementation. This format was focused on the direct engagement of participants into the learning process in order to increase the capacity of cities to fulfill their Covenant commitments.
In Belarus, representatives of technical staff from the local authorities of Belarusian Signatories of Dokshytsa, Karma, Mstislau, Pinsk and Smarhon', as well as two Georgian Signatories – Ozurgeti and Gurjaani, took part in the study visit to Brest on of May 15-17, 2019, where they studied the experience of the city on its way to decarbonization. The other five Belarusian municipalities – Baranavičy, Viliejka, Slaŭharad, Zelva and Pinsk district, as well as three Georgian cities – Sighnaghi, Chokhatauri and Lagodekhi, used an opportunity to get acquainted with the experience of adapting to climate changes during the study visit to Novogrudok on May 22-24, 2019.
Two more 3-day technical visits of the same kind took place for another two groups of 4 participants each to Slavutych on 19-21 June, 2019 and to Zhytomyr on June 25-27, 2019 respectively. Even being a bit different due to the unique situation in every of these two cities, the visits had very similar tasks within the City2City concept: to raise awareness of representatives from “guest” municipalities in the field of energy and climate policy on local level, to demonstrate practical aspects of planning, implementation and monitoring of energy and climate policy and to learn from the experience of “hosting” city in such areas as energy management system, EE financing in municipal projects within SEAP, project management within grant programmes and awareness raising for local community. These visits combined meetings with the city authorities, energy managers and site visits to the objects where the energy efficiency measures were successfully implemented in accordance to the EU standards.