The Potential of European Cities for Sustainable Evironmental/Energy Policy

vrije Universiteit amsterdam 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years the interest in urban environmental and energy policies has shown a remarkable rise. After the era of nationwide and/or sectoral energy policies it has been realized that cities and regions form important focal points for integrative and effective energy savings strategies with a view on both economizing on resource expenditures and improving environmental quality. Cities and regions are usually fairly coherent administrative units, have often a joint energy production unit, have a direct interest in resource and environment issues and have usually an abundance of statistical material. As a consequence, urban and regional energy planning is gaining increasing importance as an effective strategy for ensuing ecologically sustainable economie development, as advocated in the Brundtland report (see also Juul and Nijkamp, 1988, and Nijkamp and Volwahsen, 1990). Cities offer a wide variety of energy and environmental strategies. In addition to the national level, regional and local energy measures often turn out to be indispensable additions to the national policies. Moreover, some problems are typical local in nature and therefore they may preferably be dealt with at the local level. Demonstration, information, consultancy and individual assistance are usually the non-price ingredients for energy policy schemes in a decentralized setting. To ensure sufficiënt impact these instruments should be easily accessible for the target groups. In practice this often means that the implementation of these instruments should-whenever possible-be realised at a regional or local level. The institutional setting in which the energy system operates is of paramount importance to the feasibility and effectivity of any local energy policy. Therefore special attention will be given in our paper to the institutional aspects, with special reference to the horizontal integration and vertical separation of energy systems in Western Europe. In order to obtain better insight into the local potentials the EC commissioned a cross Community review study conceraing urban energy policy in all member countries in the framework of the CITIES programme of the EC. The present paper discusses the principal features encountered in this cross Community review study. Section two will highlight the motivation for the study. Next, some statistical information will be given concerning the economie structure and the energy consumption of the participating cities. In Section 4 the main urban energy policy issues are reviewed, while section 5 presents various cases implemented in several participating cities. section 6 discusses the importance of the institutional framework, …