Alba Local Energy Agency – ALEA, an NGO located in Alba County (Romania), created in 2008, has been supporting the EU’s Covenant of Mayors (CoM) initiative by providing specialized technical support to municipalities in Alba County for SEAP elaboration and monitorization. In 2014, ALEA became official CoM supporter and since then it has continued to enhance its support provided to new CoM signatory municipalities in the region.
ALEA set up the first regional energy observatory – ANERGO in 2015 in the framework of DATA4ACTION project (IEE) benefitting from guidance from already established energy observatories across Europe. The purpose of ANERGO Energy Observatory is to facilitate the operations with aggregated energy data at local and regional level in Romania, by acting as a ‘one- stop-shop’ structure for municipalities which have already committed or will commit to energy planning through the Covenant of Mayors or by monitoring their energy consumption in the most important municipal sectors. ANERGO is processing energy data from various sources and validates outputs to be used in emission inventories for SECAPs and other energy planning tools.
Once with the ALEA`s involvement as national partner in SUPPORT project, launched in 2017, whose purpose is to enhance the regional policy instrument regarding decarbonization and sustainable energy planning in Alba County, trough the implementation of SUPPORT Action Plan, ALEA capitalizing on the interregional experience exchange, it started an action of operational consolidation of ANERGO. Namely, ALEA, inspired by The Regional Energy and Greenhouse Gas Observatory of Rhône-Alpes (France) and the SMIV monitoring and verification platform for implemented energy efficiency measures (Croatia) developed ANERGO towards EU 2030 objectives, by adding to its databases information about climate and by developing a methodology to tackle the climate risk evaluation in the “Centru” Development Region in Romania, for supporting municipalities (existing CoM signatories) in their transition from 2020 SEAPs to 2030 SECAPs. This will also allow ANERGO to support new municipalities in the region, which are now committing to 2030 CoM objectives.
According to this action, a measure of the SUPPORT Action Plan, ALEA has started enhancing ANERGO by developing multiple tools and cooperation templates with municipalities, energy data providers, climate and weather data providers, by expanding the types of data used internally by adding historical high resolution multipoint whether data (e.g. EU’s Copernicus satellite service), key inputs from workgroups established at municipal level. As a result of using this data, ANERGO has developed the first Adaptation Action Plans and Climate Risk Assessments for municipalities in the region, as part of their SECAPs.
The process involved evaluating local and regional weather patterns, identifying, and collecting inputs from key staff at municipal level regarding urban and environmental planning, and considering existing emergency scenarios at municipal level. Social impact has also been included in this analysis.
This action is complementary with other EU projects in which ALEA is involved, such as CEESEU (H2020) that is to be launched in 2020, also supporting CoM and SECAP development. SUPPORT project payed a key role in better defining this action in a larger policy framework, followed by integration into the regional policy strategy regarding sustainable energy. This was made possible thanks to experience exchange and study visits within SUPPORT which led to new capacity of ALEA in better responding to the EU 2030 objectives based on proven EU models
"Evolution of annual median temperature in Alba Iulia (1985-2018)”
