EU Member States should recognise the role and contribution of Local and Regional Authorities (LRAs) in meeting energy and climate objectives, and cities and regions must be fully and properly involved in the drafting of the Member States' national energy and climate plans (NECPs), underlines Committee of the Regions' (CoR) rapporteur József Ribányi (EPP/HU). His draft report on Implementing the Clean Energy Package: the NECPs as a tool for local and territorial governance approach to climate, active and passive energy was adopted today by the CoR's ENVE Commission.
The NECPs will help ensure that the Energy Union objectives, particularly the EU's energy and climate targets for 2030 and 2050, are in line with the Paris Agreement. LRAs' expertise, responsibilities and financial resources should be harnessed in order to complete the Energy Union. A better involvement of cities and regions will enable the EU to achieve the targets set in an efficient manner, the draft opinion points out.
The European Commission is currently assessing the draft plans by the Member States and is expected to publish its official feedback by the end of June. The Member States will have time until the end of 2019 to submit their revised NECPs.
Rapporteur Ribányi is pleased that the Member States intend to give LRAs a role in the NECPs from the preparation stage, in line with the bottom-up approach. However, the challenges and obstacles encountered at local level – closest to consumers - must be understood and overcome in order to give credibility to national and European commitments.
Cities and regions are important actors in the field of energy, both active and passive. Ribányi's draft opinion suggests that the Member States be informed about their role with regard to a number of key priorities of the Energy Union. They have a right to be directly involved in measures touching on energy efficiency, climate change and the shift away from fossil fuels and also have an important role to play in managing energy poverty. The generation and use of local resources must be planned efficiently to enable them to fulfil their mission properly.
Rapporteur Ribányi supports the proposed Multilevel Climate and Energy Policy Dialogue insofar as it will boost LRA participation in policy discussions carried out in conjunction with the NECPs. This dialogue is also crucial for upholding the subsidiarity and proportionality principles, and so the CoR should be involved as mediator. Coordination is needed to identify inconsistencies and potential synergies between the NECPs and the Multiannual Financial Framework, the European Semester and the EU's long-term strategy for 2050.
Finally, the draft opinion emphasises that the NECPs must promote energy innovation with a view to a shift to a low-carbon economy which supports employment, growth and investment. LRAs should be involved in particular in smart city initiatives, along with green public procurement in fields such as energy savings in urban transport, interregional transport strategies, cooperation on new storage technologies and smart public buildings.
The draft opinion will be put to vote at the CoR Plenary session in October 2019.
