**Estitxu Villamor 1,2,\*, Ortzi Akizu-Gardoki 1,3, Olatz Azurza 1,4, Leire Urkidi 1,5, Alvaro Campos-Celador 6, Izaro Basurko 1,7 and Iñaki Barcena Hinojal 1,7**


Received: 22 January 2020; Accepted: 6 March 2020; Published: 12 March 2020

**Abstract:** Nowadays, there is a wide scientific consensus about the unsustainability of the current energy system and at the same time, social awareness about climate change and the IPCC's goals is increasing in Europe. Amongst the different pathways towards them, one alternative is the radical transition to a democratic low-carbon energy system where the local scale has a key leading role. Under this scope, this research is framed within the mPOWER project, financed by the European Commission's H2020 programme, which promotes collaboration among different European municipalities in order to boost the transition to a renewable-based participatory energy system. This paper presents the starting point of the mPOWER project, where the main energy features of 27 selected European municipalities are collected and analysed for the year 2016. An open public tender and selection process was carried out among European cities in order to choose the candidates to participate in mPOWER project. A view of this situation will be taken by the mPOWER project as a diagnostic baseline for the following steps: a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing process among these European municipalities, and subsequently, among a more extensive group. The first finding of the paper is that, even if those municipalities are trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, they are highly dependent on fossil fuels, even in cases where renewable energies have significant presence. Second, their energy consumption is logarithmically related to the human development index and gross domestic product but not to the size of the cities and their climate characteristics. Finally, despite the work that these cities are making towards energy transition in general and within the mPOWER project in particular, the paper shows a high difficulty mapping their energy systems. The lack of accurate and unified data by the municipalities is a sign of disempowerment at a local and public level in the energy sphere and makes difficult any strategy to advance towards a bottom-up energy transition. Among other goals, the mPOWER project aims to reveal these kinds of difficulties and help local authorities in managing their transition paths.

**Keywords:** energy transition; sustainable cities; transition roadmaps; renewable energies; policymaking; energy democracy; energy mapping

#### **1. Introduction**

The urgency for changing the current European energy model and transiting towards a more sustainable one is a well-accepted reality among European inhabitants, policy-makers and scientists. In line with this, it has been clearly detected that the elevated use of fossil fuels needs to be reduced in order to keep the temperature increase of the planet to under 2 degrees Celsius [1]. Furthermore, it has been accepted that the incoming transition will not be merely a technological transition towards renewable energy systems [2], but will require a change in our way of dealing with democracy, economy and social values [3,4]. Indeed, there is an on-going debate about how this multi-dimensional transition will take place [5]. The goals of energy democracy movements all over the world intend to resist the current energy agenda, and reclaim and restructure the energy sector [6], with desired outcomes such as shifting public resources away from fossil fuels, leaving fossil fuels on the ground and stopping extractivist infrastructures, ensuring public or social control of the energy sector, or not prioritising only the monetary benefit out of the energy system.

A number of different voices point to the need for a locally based energy transition, as the local scale is related to more participative, inclusive and socially accepted policies and actions. Van der Schoor et al. [7] argue that local communities should lead a bottom-up transition since they boost the use of local resources with democratic horizontal governance and own financial strength-based energy production and supply. Other similar studies maintain that the new energy system will be funded directly by citizens, since they are at the heart of this new transition based on decentralised renewable energy cooperatives [8]. In the same vein, Vita et el. [9] show that those individuals who are members of sustainability-oriented grassroots initiatives have a more sustainable lifestyle compared to their socio-demographic counterparts, which leads to a more satisfying life and lower carbon footprints in the analysed domains of housing, transport, clothing and food. Indeed, energy embedded in consumed products and services [10,11] is a major issue that goes beyond direct energy consumption and needs to be considered in local energy transitions in order to avoid global rebound effects. Beyond the influence of a single consumer [12], as Grabs et al. [13] point out, grassroots initiatives play a major role in this field. After analysing the nexus between individual motivation and collective action in the context of sustainable consumption, they concluded that individuals can be agents of societal change when they are organised in groups.

Furthermore, some authors attribute the progress of energy transitions in different countries to the presence of grassroots initiatives in such countries [14]. In the above-mentioned reference, Kooij et al. studied what the conditions are for grassroots initiatives to emerge, and how these initiatives create an impact upon these conditions. They observe that openness to alternative discourses and a shared knowledge are favourable conditions for the appearance of these kinds of initiatives. In turn, they argue that the influence they exert upon energy systems is low in the case of those systems with strong vested interests, and that the support by governments and institutions is crucial for those initiatives to make a change.

More specifically, in relation to local authorities, in the Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 [15], the United Nations clearly recognised the key role of local public institutions in the transition towards a more sustainable future. According to Sperling et al. [16], cities will be relevant in boosting locally produced and consumed energy systems based on renewables in different sectors. This change will occur by focusing our attention on underlying social drivers, and releasing the need for economic growth as a single scope [17]. However, they suggested that the role of municipalities needs to be outlined very clearly and that the state must provide municipalities with the necessary planning tools, establishing the required strategy, for the integration of a 100% renewable source-based decentralised

system [16] or decarbonisation plans [18]. Comodi et al. [19] show that, even while the role of local authorities is relevant, the results of their actions can be merely partial within a multi-scalar energy transition. The support and energy policies of nations and states remain central in achieving decarbonisation goals under democratic principles [20].

This paper has been developed within the mPOWER project, which focuses on the strategies and actions that municipal authorities carry out towards a sustainable and democratic energy system [21]. Within the framework of the project and despite their limitations, municipalities are recognised as key political actors in the transformation of the energy system within the European context.

During the last decade, the EU has promoted a proactive climate policy, increasing renewables and improving energy efficiency [22]. Some of the leading EU countries, going beyond climate change on the direction of the conservation of the national and global environment, have also opted for nuclear phasing-out [23]. However, the results do not appear to be sufficient. In Europe (European Union 28, EU-28), non-renewable energy consumption (coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy) constitutes 85.3% of the total primary energy supply [24], consuming 23.18 MWh of non-renewable energy per inhabitant and year (MWh·cap−1·yr−1) out of the total of 27.16 MWh·cap−1·yr−1. Even though the consumed non-renewable energy in EU-28 is 26% less than the average for OECD countries, it is 68.7% greater than the world average value [24], which has already been considered 2–6 times above sustainable levels, making it beyond the planetary boundaries [25]. This underlines that there is an urgency to continue reducing the consumed non-renewable energy in EU-28.

According to Tagliapietra et al. [22], the cost of a fully-fledged energy transition in the EU would be similar to that of preserving the current non-renewable energy system, and adopting the right policies to mitigate the distributional effects of said transformation, could make it also socially desirable. Since the social and metabolic transformations required by a real decarbonisation process are to be so relevant [26], it will be determinant to control its distributional and democratic aspects. Nevertheless, concerning local experiences, there is a gap in the current energy system between the new theoretical sustainable energy systems and the reality that the cities are facing [8]. In order to build bridges among theoretical roadmaps and practical strategies, the active role of the municipalities is considered a key factor [9]. Furthermore, difficulties in modelling the impacts of citizens' behaviour on climate change have been detected [27], concluding that further collaboration between social scientists and economic developers are required.

Cities are said to be responsible for 70% of global emissions of CO2eq [28], and different targets have been established in EU cities in order to face the energy transition towards a sustainable one. According to van den Dobbelsteen et al. [29], all targets at a municipal level should aim to research the current energy situation, reduce the total energy consumption, reuse energy (i.e., reuse flows, heat transfer) and produce renewable energy. To this effect, one of the first targets in the EU was established by the Swiss government, following the ETH researchers who estimate 17.5 MWh per capita per annum (equivalent of 2000 watt during 365 days and 24 h) as a sustainable amount [30]. This target is also aligned with the 1 eqtCO2 emissions per person and year, which would allow us to avoid a climate change scenario [30]. The percentage of integration of renewable energy or electricity has also been established, and most European cities have the goal of integrating 20% of renewable energy into their electric mix by 2020 [29]. The European Commission goes beyond and targets a renewable energy share of 20% in the gross final energy demand [31,32]. It has also been common to use relative targets in percentages, such as reductions of CO2eq emissions of 40% by 2030 [31,32] or 85–90% by 2050 [32] (compared to 1990). Another commonly used percentage target is a 27% increase in energy efficiency compared to a 'business-as-usual' projection of future energy demand [30,31]. The existence of different goals has generated a diversification of targets among different cities, with an absence of unified targets [33]. Nevertheless, despite the existence of targets, emission reductions in cities measured in consumption-based accounts do not always occur. In the study developed in six Japanese cities from 1980 to 2000, it was concluded that consumption-based emissions measured by carbon inventories have not been reduced, but rather increased from 8 to 9 eqtCO2 per year and capita [28]. Furthermore, it has been also detected that the energy consumption and carbon emissions of cities are related to their economic performance, especially in developed countries such as China [34], thus a massive reduction of energy or emissions could happen to not be attractive or convenient for some cities, drawing us into a controversial panorama.

Despite these limitations, different initiatives are being developed on the roadmap to more sustainable cities. One such example is the European Energy Awards [35], given to municipalities for energy and climate protection activities at the European level. Those cities awarded can be considered exemplary in energy transition.

In this regard, different bottom-up movements have arisen in recent years to boost the necessary energy transition. The 'Covenant of Mayors' (CoM) [36] is one of the most relevant initiatives, a movement that involves more than 9000 cities in 131 countries, where local authorities voluntarily commit to meeting and exceeding the European goals for CO2 emissions reductions [37]. In the same vein of work, 'Energy Cities', the European association of cities in energy transition, is a network of local authority representatives from 30 countries that gathers frontrunners and energy transition beginners, city officials and technical experts. Their principal goal is to support the creation of new policies through National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP) [38]. Similarly, Ursula von der Leyen presented the plan to make the EU the world's first 'climate-neutral' continent by 2050 [39].

Apart from the work that has been carried out on (and combined with) policy-making, from an academic perspective, several efforts to model a sustainable energy model have been made. The MEDEAS project [40] is one of the best examples, a tool to design the transition into a 100% renewable energy system (RES) in Europe. This initiative considers three different scenarios to model the energetic macro-economic system from 1995 to 2050: Business as Usual (BAU), Green Growth (GG) and the Post-Growth or degrowth approach (PG). Other tool to boost this transition in urban districts is the learning experience through the use of visualisation games, such as Go2Zero [41].

Within the framework of this European energy transition, the mPOWER project is funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme and aims to boost municipal actions, public engagement and the creation of routes towards the necessary Energy Transition [42]. The project is managed by seven partners (the University of Glasgow, Platform-London, the Stichting Transnational Institute, the Society for the Reduction of Carbon Limited, the Institute for Political Ecology, Energy Cities and the University of the Basque Country). Throughout the 48-month duration of the project, the partners will detect, through systematic peer review, the best replicable municipal practices in energy transitions and create a framework to share the different achievements in a peer-to-peer learning programme.

The central question of this paper is: What is the current situation, regarding energy, of the 27 municipalities that were selected for the initial stages of the learning programme? In addition, two sub-questions are defined, to be answered throughout the structure of the paper:


The analysis used in order to answer these questions is based on the statistical evaluation of various energy indicators and was carried out using the data provided by municipalities from an online survey related to energy consumption, renewable production and municipal policies and strategies of participatory energy transition. The data were collected in order to determine the baseline for year 2016 (in some cases, updated data of 2017 have been used), that is, the reference situation that will be compared with that of the end of the project. To this end, first, a description is given of the mPOWER project, as well as the methodology used in the research, which includes the baselining, standardisation and evaluation of the data. Following this, the results obtained from the 27 cities (i.e., municipalities) are presented and, finally, a summary provided of the conclusions drawn.
