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IEE EU-project BALANCE

With the support of

EIE project BALANCE
Balance globally, evaluate locally

The European Energy Award® is a qualified instrument for steering and controlling communal energy policy in order to review systematically all energy-related activities. The eea® allows municipalities to identify strengths, weaknesses and potential for improvement and, above all, implement effectively energy efficient measures. The eea® has been successfully implemented in over 300 communities in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Lithuania since 2002.
Following the request of several communities, the project team will further improve the existing eea® tools by adding the additional features of energy and CO2 balancing and estimations. The BALANCE project, which is supported by the European Commission, officially started on January 1st, 2006. 

Balance Newsletter

Expert Meeting 10th May 2007:

BALANCE plans to initiate CO2 Town Twinning Projects

One of the aims of the BALANCE project is to initiate town twinning projects based on energy issues or voluntary CO2 trading. The BALANCE project team invited a number of experts to join a workshop in Kaunas on 10th of May in order to set up a list of Do’s and Don’ts for this ambitious plan.
Representatives from Lithuania, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland spoke about their experiences from town twinning projects, such as

  • Alp region and Kyrgyzstan,
  • City of Düsseldorf and Finland, Japan, China, Russia;
  • Austrian and Indian cities,
  • Swiss and Eastern European cities.

The topics of the presentations ranged from education, exchange of experience, case studies to investments .
The project team jointly discussed how energy and voluntary CO2 trading can be included in existing town twinning partnerships or how new projects can be initiated. The following reasons were compiled on why cities will both learn and benefit from energy topics in town twinnings: 

  • additional value for an existing twinning (Mäder)
  • exchanging of experience
  • dissemination of successful projects (Düsseldorf)
  • funding cost effective CO2 saving projects (Luzern)
  • marketing and high symbolic character
  • strengthening the European Energy Award® awareness
  • starting a wider collaboration
  • improving of social understanding (Düsseldorf, VNG)

Barriers for implementing a town twinning are:

  • language problems
  • different expectations
  • financial problems
  • cultural problems

From their town twinning experience the experts gave some recommendations for the BALANCE project

  • to create a good relationship and face-to-face situations
  • to ensure good communication of the project in both countries
  • to monitor the projects by a confidential institution
  • to revitalise existing co-operations on the basis of what has been achieved
  • to find/establish a responsible person
  • to provide contacts on the same level (mayor to mayor, councillor to councillor etc.)
  • to acquire political backing

For more detailed information please click on the relevant presentation or contact the speaker directly.

 

The main aims of the BALANCE project are:

  • to develop and test tools to evaluate energy and CO2 saving potentials at municipal level in general and of individual hard as well as soft measures in particular
  • to implement the eea® in two new countries (CZ and NL)
  • to elaborate schemes for voluntary agreements between local and regional bodies as well as CO2 town twinning projects

Expected results

  • Database of the impacts already achieved by the European Energy Award® programme
  • standardised tool/methodology for energy and CO2 balancing at municipal level
  • a tool for the estimation of energy and CO2 savings including hard and soft measures, on measure level
  • all relevant eea® instruments will be available in Dutch and Czech
  • 450 municipalities are using the eea®, 100 of them with the newly developed instruments

A more detailed summary of the IEE project BALANCE you can find on the European Union Website.

Project start: 01.01.2006
Project duration: 24 month

The partner consortium of the project consists of:

Project summary

The proposed action aims to develop and test tools to evaluate energy and CO2 saving potentials at municipal level in general and of individual hard as well as soft measures in particular. This leads to improved knowledge and a better data basis for decision making by identifying the most cost efficient measures. In addition, it will make the realisation of new approaches like voluntary agreements and CO2 town twinning projects possible. In general, an increased implementation of energy efficient measures, the use of renewable energies and sustainable mobility measures at local level will be stimulated.

The proposed action is based on a successful certification and quality management system for energy efficient municipalities, the European Energy Award® (eea®), which is currently applied by about 320 municipalities of 9 European countries. The eea® assesses, awards and monitors the level of implementation to stimulate energy actions and investments. A standardised assessment based on a catalogue of about 90 measures allows benchmarking among the participating municipalities. With the assistance of the eea® tools enormous energy and cost savings have been realised in recent years. But there is still a great demand by local authorities to determine the quantitative effects, especially energy and CO2 savings, of their local energy policy and individual measures. A number of municipalities have drawn up energy/CO2 balances or energy saving estimations of hard measures to evaluate the effects of their energy policy. But they are often uncertain about which software tool, data base and methodology is best for their particular needs. Therefore, there is a lack of knowledge and no harmonised methodology or tool which the key actors in the energy sector can use. In addition, soft measures are rarely evaluated so far but contribute enormously reducing energy consumption and using energy from renewable sources. This is an important issue in times of scarce municipal funds. It is a political problem to achieve the implementation of soft measures if the effects are not valuable. The proposed action solves this problem and delivers arguments for the political discussion.

Within the BALANCE project, the existing eea® tools will be further developed to arrive at a harmonised methodology and tool for energy/CO2 balances at local level (top-down) and for estimating energy/CO2 savings of the 90 hard and soft measures listed in the eea® catalogue of measures (bottom-up). These will be worked out in close collaboration with the relevant key actors and with a comprehensive evaluation of existing software tools and methodologies. The new elaborated tools will be easy to apply and also appropriate for the application in smaller municipalities. They will be tested in 20 municipalities and after revision widely implemented in about 100 municipalities.

In addition, the certification and management system with its new developed tools will be introduced in two new countries, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. There, the entire certification procedure and tools will be adapted to the country-specific conditions and implemented in two model municipalities of each country. By the end of the project 450 European municipalities will participate in the eeaÒ programme. Finally, schemes for voluntary agreements between local and regional bodies analogous to the already existing practice in business as well as CO2 town twinning projects will be elaborated. At least two projects will be initiated using these schemes with the assistance of the applied tools of energy/CO2 balances as an excellent data base.

Deliverables

Links

europa.eu.int/comm/energy/intelligent/projects/doc/factsheets/balance.pdf