GREEN TWINNING IN MARACENA
“MUNICIPAL TWINNING IN ENERGY AND THE COVENANT OF MAYORS”
At the end of September a new visit of the Greek partners of the “Ciudad del Sol” Ilioupoli has been organised to the city of Maracena to continue with the work of the Green Twinning project, and to learn in situ about the actions in energy matters that are being carried out in this municipality (Public Transport, “Sustainable Maracena” project, LED lighting and remote management, Photovoltaic and Biomass installations, Energy Audits, ESE Contract, etc.), as well as other actions in the field of more sustainable construction developed by companies from Granada “Construcciones Otero” (http://www.construccionesotero.com/wp-content/themes/mdm/images/news/130926_Manantia_GranadaHOY.pdf) and “BPS Group” (http://www.controlerosion.es/english/?page_id=518), as well as the University of Granada.
The GREEN-TWINNING project (IEE programme of the European Commission) focuses on the development and implementation of Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs). The elaboration of the SEAP and its submission to the Covenant of Mayors is a pre-requisite, but the main objective is to take municipalities one step further and train them on how to implement Sustainable Energy actions in their municipalities.
The project aims to enable municipalities with experience in SEAP development to guide/assist inexperienced municipalities in implementing the Covenant of Mayors initiative. The project proposes to form a “pool of inexperienced municipalities” from Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia, as well as another group of “expert” municipalities, including 8 municipalities from Granada. These municipalities have been selected through the agreements signed between the Agencia Energética de la Ribera and the Agencia Provincial de la Energía de Granada on 16 October 2012, to collaborate in the European projects “Energy Neighbourhoods II” and “Green Twinning”.
The main objective of the Green Twinning project in our region is that the staff of the Eastern European municipalities can learn more about the many, varied and interesting actions in the field of sustainable energy existing in the Province of Granada, but it is also an interesting opportunity for the participating municipalities of Granada to learn in the same way how the actions in the field of energy are carried out in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, by signing these twinning agreements to promote the actions of the European “Covenant of Mayors”, the different municipalities are already fulfilling several of the requirements to be included in this initiative.
In addition, new possibilities for collaboration between the municipalities participating in the project are opening up as there are different calls for European funds that are already being studied, where one of the most important criteria to be assessed is the capacity of the applicants to create collaboration networks within the European Union.
More information on the website of the Provincial Energy Agency of Granada, the website of the Diputación de Granada (Provincial Council of Granada), or the official website of the project: