Cities and local governments In Europe partners are still struggling with accessing the right data to accelerate local actions across sectors. More importantly, EU Covenant signatories often lack capacity of using the data, analyze it and apply it in the development of local policies and implementation of plans. This affects in particular smaller to medium sized municipalities, and hinders action planning and implementation in sectors such as transport, due to the capillarity of the information required to develop ad hoc measures. 80% of the EU Covenant signatories count less than 50,000 inhabitants. As such, Territorial Coordinators often take on the responsibility to help, support, and even directly provide information (including data and data analysis) to smaller municipalities.

Often Territorial Coordinators and Supporters play an important role in supporting the smaller communities in developing their plans and assess their baseline. Even where data is accessible and available, cities and local governments still struggle with managing and processing the data acquired due to limited technical capacity or resources available to process in action-oriented manner the information available.

Whilst a wide array of data is made available via the national and regional level, with a still consistent gap in the transport sector. This webinar will kick-start a conversation around tools and resources that can support cities in accelerate their race towards carbon neutrality, starting from opportunities in the transport sector.

The webinar will present a range of available tools to support local governments in their action planning and implementation, by featuring cities‘ on-the-ground experiences.

The webinar, organized in partnership between the EU Covenant and the Global Covenant of Mayors is the first of three sessions, dedicated to selected EU Covenant Territorial Coordinators, Supporters and cities. The following sessions will focus on solar/RES potential (12 May) and building sector (26 May).