The CoME EASY project was aimed at supporting, facilitating and extending the engagement of local public authorities on their pathway towards a sustainable, smart and responsible energy and climate policy according to the EU 2030/50 targets.
Thousands of local authorities are already committed to national and EU programs like the European Energy Award (eea) and Covenant of Mayors (CoM) to reinforce local energy action and hence improve the cities’ performances, however, results, data and reports often cannot be transferred from one initiative to another due to differing methodologies and requirements. CoME EASY mission was to align the main initiatives and to develop a supportive tool package that combines forces by systemically linking and synthesizing their procedures and approaches. This optimized interoperability facilitates the daily operational work of local authorities, while at the same time fully exploiting the initiatives’ benefits and unique features.
CoME EASY has been implemented in 7 nations and tested in further 4, involving 18 Ambassador forerunners cities developing tools and 28 public authorities, counting more than 180 municipalities and about 6 million inhabitants, in the roll out.
New synchronizing CoME EASY tools of different kind have been developed facilitating a user-friendly, comprehensive, integrated and co-productive procedure:
- Calculation tools: Emission Path Tool (EPT), Mitigation Impacts Calculator
- Reporting facilitators: SECAP creator / ISO facilitator, municipal buildings database
- Benchmarking tools: KPIs dashboard, best practices library
- Training materials and stakeholders’ engagement guidelines
An Award
Significant achievements can be reported, like the Memorandum of Understanding signed during EUSEW 2019 between eeaâ and CoM for mutual recognition/cooperation. The project has been awarded in Italy in 2021 by FORUM PA as best methodology for sustainable policies monitoring.
Based on the analysis and the experience in the implementation phase, the project consortium has identified several potential cross-fertilisation benefits of the combination of the initiatives and has suggested possible further adaptations needed for an optimal and continuous process alignment both at strategic and technical level.
CoME EASY Open Support Package
The harmonisation of the processes supports long term commitment and achievements improving the impact of local authorities engaged with EU energy and climate targets.
Municipalities should be facilitated in the data collection as well as in the reporting activities while asking for more quality in the exploitation of their potential and in monitoring.
The CoME EASY open support package, hosted on the project’s Open Platform (https://www.european-energy-award.org/eu-project-come-easy) where any interested municipality can register to access the tools free of charge, can:
- facilitate local authorities` multiple engagement in different initiatives simplifying their daily operational work
- expedite the elaboration and implementation of SECAP meeting EU objectives
- support the implementation of standards and the introduction of smart innovations
- improve capacity and skills of the municipal staff in energy and climate planning
- help to achieve better local climate performances compliant with regional, national and EU targets
- facilitate benchmarking among cities and municipalities
- enhance internal and external cooperation
- support communication of results and strategies