Local Climate Action Plans - Tools to Address Energy Consumption and Improve Environmental Performance of Local Communities

Achieving the ambitious 2020 targets in greenhouse gases’ emissions reduction is a challenging task for industrialized economies and requires a coordinated action. A pivotal role is given to local administrations, that are called to drive the conversion of the energy sector towards low carbon technologies. The paper proposes a decision support tool based on local climate action plans for a holistic approach to the emission reduction in different energy intensive sectors (transport, constructions, electricity supply, energy generation). The tool is aimed at identifying suitable measures for the design and control of GHG actions. A set of indicators to evaluate the performance of local policies, linked to GIS based maps for an effective impact on territories is proposed. A smart use of existing information can help to optimize the energy supply at local level, to follow the improvement of performances and to weigh future scenarios.