Our Activities: Tools and Methods > Energy and CO2 Monitoring
Energy and CO2 Monitoring
Cities and towns committed to climate protection and aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions need regular emission inventories to verify and authenticate success in their local climate change and energy policy.
Climate Alliance has developed a set of rules for monitoring local CO2 emissions. The internet based tool ECORegion enables the calculation of municipal energy and CO2 inventories according to these rules. It has been developed by the Swiss company Ecospeed, Climate Alliance and B.&S.U. mbH (for the European Energy Award®-local authorities) and was launched in August 2008 with versions for Germany and Switzerland.
CO2 monitoring within Climate Alliance
Together with member municipalities, Climate Alliance has strived to create a description of the CO2 monitoring rules, which has validity for all members. The CO2 monitoring rules reflect the experience Climate Alliance has gained to date.
Further information here.
What does the tool offer?
The tool provides series of energy and CO2 inventories, for example per energy carrier and per sector. It is suitable both for monitoring the overall CO2 reduction in a municipality during a certain period and for monitoring progress within a specific sector. The tool provides an inventory that can be used retroactively until 1990. The following sectors are considered: public facilities, households, private sector and transport. Due to country specific data provided by the tool a first starting inventory can be calculated by entering a limited amount of data.
What is needed from the local authority?
Although the starting inventory only requires basic data concerning the number of inhabitants and the number of employees, own data of your region are relevant to obtain a comprehensive final inventory. Data about energy consumption and kilometres travelled are particularly important.
What are the benefits for the local authority using the tool?
As the tool is internet based, no software installations are needed. The country specific and comprehensive database for energy, emissions and further environmental factors are updated each year, making the tool easy to handle without oneself having to care about current energy data. The standardised methodology to prepare your energy and CO2 inventory supports a long-term process with regular inventory updates, realised by different departments within the municipality and for comparison with other municipalities.
CO2 reduction targets set in the framework of Climate Alliance, the Covenant of Mayors target or other individual reduction targets can be inserted as reduction paths against which the current data of the local authority can be compared. The European Commission officially recognised ECORegion as an efficient tool for the preparation of Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAP) in the framework of the Covenant of Mayors initiative: By means of an automatic function relevant inventory data can be exported to the Baseline Emission Inventory of the SEAP template.
Who can use this tool?
The tool is at the disposal for all local authorities – not only members of Climate Alliance. It is currently available in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France.
The price of the annual licence fee is determined by the size of your local authority. Members of Climate Alliance as well as eea® communities pay a reduced licence fee (minus 20 %).
Here you can register to order and use ECORegion.
For further information please contact Miguel Morcillo m.morcillo(at)climatealliance.org
Tel: +49 (0)69 717139-17
