Why we joined!

Why join the Energie-Cités network? Because 75% of all energy consumption in Europe occurs in urban areas, local authorities more than ever have a pivotal role to play. Taking action at local level will help you to:

• Reduce your energy consumption and energy bill whilst reducing local emissions and effluents,
• Stimulate local growth by making use of locally available resources,
• Be recognised as an innovative town or city.

All this is possible! Energie-Cités was established as an association of European local authorities in 1990 to put all this into practice.

York (GB)

Christian Vassie, Chair of City Strategy, City of York Council

"Right across Europe we all face the same challenges: how to reduce energy consumption and how to increase energy efficiency. Standing alone, the task is immense. Working across frontiers - exchanging best practice, debating our successes and failures, pooling our resources and our ideas – we can achieve together what we cannot achieve as individual municipalities. York joined Energie-Cités in 2005. By the end of last year we had helped to secure for Yorkshire the largest regional representation across Europe, with 13 Municipalities signed up to the Display Campaign, helping us to develop a regional perspective as well as an international one. We are successfully introducing Display into schools and public buildings across the city. Progress on energy efficiency requires that young people, teachers, employees, and the public, as well as energy experts, understand the issues and the solutions. Working with our colleagues in Energie-Cités we have a chance to make that happen."

Nyíregyháza (HU)

Csabai Lászlóné, Mayor, City of Nyíregyháza

"Nyíregyháza (HU) has achieved significant results in improving energy efficiency for the last 15 years. Large part of the investments has been made by the city itself, but we also used external funds, exploiting opportunities in call for proposals. Today, we aim to acknowledge these results by joining to an `elite club`, a European community committed to implement local sustainable energy management. We aim to learn from the leaders. At the same time, the potential to be compared and benchmarked motivates us to set new goals and achieve them."

Napoli (IT)

Michele Macaluso, Executive director, Energy Agency of Naples

"Naples Agency for Energy and Environment (ANEA) was set up in 1999 and has been a member of Energie-Cités since then. This Association gave great support to ANEA in its first three years and still today continues to encourage us to exchange information and experience on energy policies and also sustainable mobility with other European cities. This has given us know-how and expertise in this field and has also raised our international profile. Thanks to Energie-Cités we are involved in developing important European projects. We appreciate the technical and human support we have received over the years and hope to continue to cooperate in the future."

Helsinki (FI)

Ulla Soitinaho, Development Manager, City of Helsinki

"In 1995 the international work in energy saving had just started in the City of Helsinki. We immediately realised that we will need dynamic network by which we could exchange experience and knowledge and especially within cities. In 1996 City of Helsinki became a member of Energie-Cités. With the help of Energie-Cités and it’s competent and helpful staff it has been easy to receive reliable information – general or very detailed - of certain energy issues, good practice in some other city we could use. Energie-Cités has also been a very good channel for dissemination of our own experience. It has been very encouraging to receive a request for more information of our practice or project – which means that our work is not valuable or affecting only locally. Since Energie-Cités knows on the other hand the work, targets and initiatives of each member city and on the other hand the targets of different European Union programmes, directives etc well, it is easy for them to organise or help to organise fruitful joint projects which will benefit as many member cities as possible. One example of this kind of projects, which Energie-Cités launched and coordinated, is the successful Display label project. When speaking about Energie-Cités you cannot forget extremely well organised Annual Conferences and meetings. These occasions offer us all possibility to hear about highly topical issues, good experience of other cities and have interesting discussions with others working with the same issues and deepen relationship with other cities. Energie-Cités has fulfilled all our expectations!"

Brasov (RO)

Gabriel Andronache, Vice-Mayor, City of Braşov

"Being a member of Energie-Cites and, further on, being elected as vice president in the Energie-Cites management board was a chance for our municipality to join an EU Network of municipalities acting in a major area of interest for a local community - the efficient use of energy resources. The experience of other communities, members of Energie-Cites, in implementing remarkable projects, in changing the behaviour of citizens and in the specific approach towards intelligent management of the local resources has decisively contributed to our municipalities’ involvement in the network initiatives. We therefore became pioneers in Romania in this field of activity, by launching the first Romanian Energy Info Point, by joining the Display Campaign and by hosting, for the first time in our country, an Energie-Cites annual conference in 2007. In the Energie-Cites network we found partners for our various projects, specialized help and, last but not least, we found friends ."

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