H2020 CoME EASY project

Many local authorities committed to advance on the clean energy transition have joined initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) or the European Energy Award (eea). However, results, data and reports often cannot be transferred from one initiative to another due to diverging methodologies and requirements.

CoME EASY’s mission was to better align methodologies of existing initiatives, mainly focusing on CoM and eea 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.

An open platform, made by cities for cities, is now available in 7 nations (Italy, Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania and Switzerland). It includes calculation tools, reporting facilitators, benchmarking dashboards, training materials and stakeholders’ engagement guidelines already tested by 48 public authorities counting more than 180 municipalities and about 6 million inhabitants.

The CoME EASY open support package 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

Significant achievements can be reported, like the Memorandum signed between eea^â and CoM for mutual recognition, the cooperation with the Smart Cities guidance package and the Italian 2021 award by FORUM PA as best methodology for sustainable policies monitoring.