City Energy and Climate Action Plans: How to set Targets and Develop a Plan

Summary

This half-day training aims at providing cities and local governments with basic knowledge and tools to elaborating Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs). Training is targeted for practitioners from local governments / city administrations attending the World Urban Forum.

Background

Implementing the New Urban Agenda and the SDGs at local level is a key challenge for city administrations across the world. In the field of climate change, most city administrations lack resources to develop a detailed and strategic framework for measuring, planning, and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and related climatic impacts. City energy and climate planning is now more important than ever. However, few developing cities have comprehensive climate action plans or green growth strategies that are based on reliable data.

Municipalities design and utilise SECAPs as customised roadmaps for making informed decisions and understanding where and how to achieve the largest and most cost-effective emissions reductions that are in alignment with other municipal goals. Climate action plans, at a minimum, include an inventory of existing emissions, reduction goals or targets, and analysed and prioritized reduction actions. Ideally, a climate action plan also includes an implementation strategy that identifies required resources and funding mechanisms. Monitoring and Reporting of emission reduction is also an important component, which allows to aggregate the achievement of individual local authorities

Contribution to the New Urban Agenda and to the SDGs

Cities today consume roughly two-thirds of the global primary energy supply and produce over 70% of the global energy-related CO2 emissions, making them the largest market for sustainable energy and the principal arena for climate action. Moreover, as population and economic growth accelerate urbanization, the demand in cities for clean, reliable, and affordable electricity, heating and cooling, transport, process power, and other energy forms will dramatically increase.

Article 15 of the Quito Declaration states that cities should adopt and implement disaster risk reduction and management, reduce vulnerability, build resilience and responsiveness to natural and human-made hazards and foster mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Moreover, Article 14 emphasizes the importance of ensuring environmental sustainability by promoting clean energy and energy efficiency.

The SDG 11 - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Energy is furthermore a central aspect of poverty eradication, with hundreds of millions of urban dwellers denied development benefits due to lack of high-quality energy access. In addition, renewable energy can contribute to key aspects of Sustainable Development Goal 11 on sustainable cities, such as air quality, waste management, safety and resilience towards disasters.

The SGD 13 – Climate Action

Local action is required to combat climate change and its impacts. According to the UN, planetary warming continued in 2016, setting a new record of about 1.1 degrees Centigrade above the preindustrial period, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2016. Drought conditions predominated across much of the globe, aggravated by the El Niño phenomenon.