**2. The mPOWER Project**

The mPOWER project aims, by means of learning programmes participated in by more than 100 local public authorities, to replicate innovative best practices in municipal energy, and develop ambitious energy transition plans. The project relies on two learning programmes: first, a bespoke learning programme (referred to as mPOWER Exchange) in which 27 cities are participating and second, a peer-to-peer online learning programme (referred to as mPOWER Digital) where around 90 municipalities will participate. This publication deals with the first part of the project, the bespoke learning process, in which 27 cities are involved. In order to choose the cities, Covenant of Majors [36] and Energy Cities [43] platforms were used to share the possibility of participating in the project across all European cities. Furthermore, the institutions leading the mPOWER project (see Acknowledgments) offered hundreds of municipalities the possibility of applying to take part in the selection process.

Among all the candidate cities, a ranking was developed by the Glasgow University members so as to choose the most appropriate cities. The ranking was made following an online survey, interviews and online research and was developed a selection of main learning preferences of cities based on motivation and participation for an energy transition; experience in renewable energy integration; experience in energy efficiency and consumption organisation. It is important to note that the cities were selected not only for their expertise, but moreover for their interest in participating in a learning programme. The selected cities were classified into three topics: Local Energy Communities, Renewable Energy Integration and Energy Efficiency. Finally, in order to start the learning process, one or two working groups have been created for each of the topics. In each of the five different working groups created, a group leader was selected by the project organiser. The group leaders have the role of showing the rest of the members the initiatives that have been developed or are planned to be developed.

The mPOWER Exchange programme is based on city visits to share knowledge, and enables technicians and policy-makers to invest face-to-face time researching, understanding and contrasting existing and new energy infrastructures and projects, with the aim of promoting participation and enhancing the exchange of practical knowledge and expertise.

#### **3. Methodology of the Research Baseline**

At the initial stage, a baseline evaluation was planned within mPOWER in order to establish a reference framework to be compared with the situation at the end of the project. This baseline will serve to gain knowledge on the energy reality of the participating cities and to help to evaluate the expected impacts from the mPOWER project:


Because of the lack of a public European or worldwide database about energy consumption and production at the municipal level [36], and the fact that there is very little up-to-date online information in this field, our strategy was to directly collect the data via an online survey (see Appendix A Material for accessing the survey) to be completed by the municipal technicians or politicians in charge of the mPOWER project in each participating city.

The questions from the survey cover both qualitative and quantitative aspects related to the objectives and the expected impacts of the project: Amount and type of consumed energy; greenhouse gas emissions (GHG); renewable energy systems (RES); municipal public staff in the energy sector and in energy transition projects; municipal public investments related to energy transition; municipal plans for renewable energy power development; municipality led initiatives and policies for energy transition; citizenship/cooperative-led initiatives and campaigns for energy transition.

Taking into account the impacts for mPOWER and specific targets for energy transition listed above, several indicators were chosen to be analysed in this baseline. Some of them were directly obtained from the survey, some were found in the literature on the topic and some were calculated by the authors. The following table lists all the analysed indicators, relating them to the expected impacts and targets, as well as indicating where in the paper they can be found. Note that impact 3 is transversal to all targets that is why it is not appearing in Table 1.

The performance of these indicators, by assessing them at the beginning and at the end of the project, will be used to evaluate the impacts achieved and the success of different strategies and actions that will be carried out throughout the project. Some of the indicators, such as total energy consumption and RES percentage, are analysed in this paper in order to evaluate how cities are currently performing. However, others such as RES installation and production are left for a future analysis and comparison with the end-of-project situation. This is due to the difficulty in obtaining a reference target to compare with.

## *3.1. Survey Data Standardisation Methodology*

As mentioned above, we faced difficulties with the data collection since some of the cities did not complete the survey (or part of it) and, among those cities that did, in some cases the collected data was not consistent. After compiling all the information on a database, the validity of the RES production, energy consumption and GHG emission data was assessed as explained below.

In the case of municipal RES production, we related the data on installed power (in MW) with the total annual production (in MWh) in order to obtain the capacity factor (CF), i.e., ratio of actual energy output over a whole year to the maximum possible energy output over that year [44]. We considered the data were consistent only when the CF ranged between 1 and 90%. In those cases where only installed power or annual production was given, the data could not be checked for consistency (which is regarded as a lack of data in Figure 1). See Table A1 from the Appendix B. for checking how the RES data were interpreted.

**Figure 1.** Municipalities selected for the mPOWER exchange programme. The selected 27 municipalities are classified in five different working groups.

In the case of the energy consumption and GHG emission data, first the values per capita were obtained by dividing the values given by each city by the number of inhabitants. We then compared them to the national per capita average consumption and emission data, taken from the International Energy Agency (IEA) database (2016) [24]. The data given by the cities were considered consistent when they were on the same order of magnitude as the ones taken from the IEA: specifically, when the data of the cities were no lower than one-third of the IEA data, or they were no higher than three times the IEA data. When the data were not considered consistent or when no information was given, the IEA data were used instead.
