There has been an increasing interest by different stakeholders for cities to play a bigger role in climate change policy. According to some estimates, cities are home to 80% of EU citizens, responsible for 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Urban areas will play a key role in improving energy efficiency and develop low-carbon business and economic development. This is increasingly recognised by policy makers at member state and EU level. The European Commission under the auspices of DG Transport and Energy has launched the “Covenant of mayors” initiative. Cities are important centres of policy innovation and can – among other – advance clean energy systems, sustainable transport, management of waste and water or improve energy efficiency in buildings to reduce greenhouse gases.
Against this background, CEPS is launching a Task Force to explore different opportunities for cities and business to accelerate low-carbon development.
The Task Force principal objectives are:
• Take stock of ongoing initiatives and discussions on the role of cities and climate change policy;
• Identify and think through some of the issues that emerge;
• Test the ideas of cities and climate change policy among EU and international stakeholders; markets;
• Create a broad network of interested stakeholders;
• Work out a set of concrete recommendations to be presented to local, national, EU and international policy-makers and negotiators.
• Fitting commitments by cities into the post-2012 agreement; legal, economic and political aspects
• Scale of abatement potential; what can marginal abatement cost curves tell us on the potential? This includes the issue of boundaries of competencies and sectors
• Coherence: i) avoiding double regulation; ii) coherence between 2020 and 2050 targets; iii) spatial coherence
• Cities and carbon market: i) cities and the ETS; ii) voluntary markets CDM & JI; iii) the new post-2012 mechanisms including domestic off-sets, etc.
• City experiences, e.g. Grenoble, Lyon, Tokyo etc.
Chair:
Laurence Tubiana, Director, Director, Institut pour le développement durable and relations Internationales (IDDRI), Paris
Rapporteurs:
Christian Egenhofer, Senior Research Fellow, CEPS
Noriko Fujiwara, Research Fellow, CEPS
Monica Alessi, Research Fellow & Programme Manager, CEPS
Meetings:
1st meeting: 15 May 2009 (agenda)
2nd meeting: 15 October 2009 (agenda)
3rd meeting: 26 November 2009
4th and final meeting: 23 April 2010
TASK FORCE REPORT : please purchase or download here.
See the Covenant of Mayors announcement of the report here.
Prospectus of the Task Force (including Agenda & Registration Form)
Presentations 15 May 2009:
Urban Climate Change: Looking beyond the EU– Stephen A. Hammer, PhD Director, Urban Energy Program, CEMTPP
Fitting commitments by cities into a post-2012 climate change agreement: political, economic, technical and legal aspects – Benoit Lefèvre & Matthieu Wemaere, IDDRI
Local Climate Plans and the Role of Cities: The need for structured targets and methodologies– Patrick Criqui, Senior Researcher, CNRS.
Cities and Climate Change at the OECD– Jan Corfee-Morlot, OECD
Presentations 15 Oct 2009
Key messages from the first meeting – Christian Egenhofer & Monica Alessi, CEPS
Comparative Analysis of Local GHG Inventory Tools for Cities – Veolia Environnement; College of Europe
Dynamic Scenario and Action Plan – Energies Demain
Supporting cities to cut carbon: Perspective of EIB – Edward Calthrop, Economist, IAD
Sustainable Cities. Key results from the München and London study – Jean-Paul Peers, Energy and Climate Policy, Siemens AG
The Göteborg Case – Henrik Forsgren, Göteborg Energi
Presentation 26 Nov 2010
Introduction to the Draft Outline of 20 November “EU levers to accelerate city actions on climate change” –
Christian Egenhofer & Monica Alessi
