Some of our member cities assisted to the last two capacity building sessions, this time focusing on Energy Efficiency and Mobility.

Following the same structure as the sessions on March, the first session on energy efficiency consisted on providing a general overview of the current status, challenges and opportunities that Mediterranean cities had in relation to energy efficiency. With this objective, participants could learn and share their own experience regarding the current status of energy usage in Mediterranean cities. The energy efficiency training module was provided by Ms. Verdiana Russo, an expert on energy efficiency from Anthesis Lavola who also provided insight on energy transition and city strategic plans towards energy efficiency, and participants saw and agreed on how important it is to involve and communicate with citizens when planning and implementing an energy-efficiency project. Finally, the expert shared some funding opportunities that municipalities have if they want to finance a project which enhances their efficiency. As always, it was extremely interesting to hear the point of view of our municipalities and their interests, situation or projects which would like to implement, as well as the reasons why such implementation becomes a challenge.

During the second session of this module, Ms. Russo brought a number of interesting cases of real municipalities who implemented energy-efficiency increasing measures, focusing on a wide range of solutions: from performing energy audits and a subsequent lighting plan; the replacement of current lighting systems; the installation of renewable energy solutions at different scales; bioenergy production nearby rural areas, or the building of energy management systems.

The first session of the mobility training module focused on setting the challenges and requirements of urban mobility systems in the  Mediterranean region; assessing the role of urban mobility and transport planning in the urban quality of life. Two experts on the topic, Mr. Miguel Mósca and Mr. Alexander Schmidt, from BABLE were in charge of guiding the session talking about sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMPs); sharing good practices in active mobility, shared mobility, monitoring flows, management and services; data for traffic  management; and on defining long-term urban mobility strategies. During this session, municipalities shared their main challenges and problematics, and categorised them according to their importance and the difficulty of solving them. Again, the second session focused on real examples of measures to tackle mobility challenges in different municipalities. These ranged from municipalities which promoted active mobility by refurbishing and promoting the city’s bike sharing systems; the implementation of high-level public transport service corridors in peripheral districts; the creation of a mobility centre to organise and manage all sustainable mobility activities; the creation of a smart taxi stand with real-time information about taxi availability; the promotion of mobility management strategies for vulnerable groups, among others.

The third session of both modules consisted on a highly interactive session in which participants were divided by sub-groups and discussed about a ficticious-case scenario. They collaborated to share their points of view of possible measures to be implemented to solve the challenges proposed, by taking into account their own experience and what was learnt in the first two corresponding sessions.

After finalising the first sections of the four thematic modules, the mentoring process begins. During this process, three municipalities per training module will benefit from a set of one-to-one sessions with the experts of each module. During these sessions, municipalities, guided by the experts will select a problematic that they would like to tackle, and they will find a possible and realistic measures to accomplish this objective. At the end of this mentoring process, municipalities will have a concept note that will serve as a roadmap for the municipality or as seed for future project proposals under a competitive call or for donors.

If you are a municipality member of the MedCities network and you are interested in applying for the two mentoring processes which are still open, do not hesitate to do so by using the following links.

Mobility training module

Energy efficiency training module

For more information you can contact us at: contact@medcities.org