MUNICIPAL GREENHOUSE GAS BALANCING AND REGIONAL CLIMATE PROTECTION PORTALS
Project leader: Dr. Christel Simon
Further information: www.energieagentur.rlp.de/projekte/kommune/kombirek/
A problem in Rhineland-Palatinate are inconsistent or missing data for the compilation of energy balances and above all the updating of already existing energy balances, which were created within the framework of the compilation of local energy and climate protection concepts. There is a multitude of methodologies in the municipal greenhouse gas balance, which impair the comparability, updating or aggregation for higher-level administrative bodies and often overload local authorities and balance readers with the interpretation. Due to the time and effort required to obtain data, resources are tied up and consumed at an early stage. The high expenditure required and the heterogeneous data situation increase the inhibition threshold for strategic municipal climate protection, especially in municipalities with limited financial resources. The interpretation and comparison of the balance sheets - are often difficult especially when updating concepts. The know-how to do so is often an additional expenditure. Furthermore, energy and climate protection concepts often end up in a drawer and are not implemented due to a lack of time, financing or staff. The information is hardly accessible to the public. At the same time, the previous formats of drafting and implementing (partial) concepts often meet with little response on the ground. The participation formats are usually designed as face-to-face events. This is rather poor. Therefore, Energy Agency Rhineland-Palatinate (EARLP) was looking for a solution and wanted to test uniform balancing and data collection for RLP in a pilot region.
EARLP used the experiences of the Romanian project partner ALEA (Alba Local Energy Agency) who developed ANERGO, an Energy Observatory, to introduce a uniform system and a uniform tool nationwide and to encourage public participation in the implementation of concepts.
Meanwhile, EARLP found a project partner for the balancing tool: the “Climate Protection Planner” which is offered by the climate alliance. EARLP has now concluded usage agreements for the "Climate Protection Planner" accounting software with over 60 municipalities. These enable balancing for 276 administrative units. Interest has already been expressed in 43 others. This means that in Rhineland-Palatinate, 40 % of the administrative districts and the independent towns and cities, as well as 30 percent of the municipalities belonging to associations and independent municipalities and 213 local municipalities already have such a licence. Outside the pilot region (district of Southwest Palatinate), the district of Ahrweiler and all the municipalities in the association are also able to calculate their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions using the climate protection planner.
Concerning the balancing in the pilot region, the region is not yet supplied with licences over a large area, in some cases approvals for data retrieval are still missing. Also, the project partner is working on the implementation of the interface in the balancing tool for export.
To encourage public participation in the process of implementing and monitoring of SEAPs, a white Label Modular regional climate protection portal will be created. Therefore, EARLP partnered up with the university of Koblenz-Landau. Concerning the programming of the climate protection portal, the award of contract happened in February 2020.
The team is now starting with the conception of the climate protection portal, it will be finalized by the end of 2020.
