Page 180 - Proceeding 2015

FAMP MU?ATESCU Virgil and COMĂNESCU Mihaela
CCASP ENERGY EFFICIENCY – A CHALLENGE FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES

1. WHY LOCALITIES ARE SO IMPORTANT

Localities are the basis for any nation’s development. According to a World Bank Group document,

“always they have been the most complex artifacts in any civilization” (Moffatt et al., 2012). Nowadays,
the challenges that they have to cope increase because of the dimensions magnitude, connection to the
global economy, poor local resources, population needs, but also because appearance of transnational

problems, like climate change.

Unfortunately, the plans to solve all these issues face difficulties related to time horizons imposed by
electoral cycles and – sometimes – group interests and this impedes to have an integrated thinking on

long term, following correct development goals. Additionally, competition existing among neighboring
localities – sometimes generated by the different parties that their leaders belong – can jeopardize a
common approach for the same problems or an integrated planning inside the county or region that

through coordination and collaboration could have an increased efficiency.

That is why, it is so important to develop public policies that are trans- and over- political parties and
these is desirable to be integrated into sustainable and long term development strategies, areas where

localities can cooperate and ways how the proposed measures are implemented. Typical for such PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” 30 th – 31 st October 2015 Bucharest
common public policies are energy services and mitigation of impact on environment.

In this paper, we want to underline the importance of energy efficiency in solving these issues. Through

energy efficiency a number of localities achieved “more with less”, at the same time enjoying a healthier
environment and prospering in national and global economy.

It is known that energy efficiency represents the first of the solutions to address for better energy

services to the citizens. At the same time, it represents the primordial reply to the “energy trilemma”
challenges, how they have been identified by World Energy Council: security of supply, sustainable

development, and energy services affordability (World Energy Council, 2014).

In this context, it is essential to understand that in the localities governance is mandatory to properly
deal with these issues in a sustainable way with benefits for the citizens. In many recent studies, the

challenges mentioned above become tangible and urgent, especially in cities. Concerning this,
documents of Covenant of Mayors (CoM) draw two important conclusions (Covenant of Mayors, 2013):

? Fight against climate change will be won or lost in urban areas;

? Majority of European population live and work in cities (three of four European citizens),

consuming about 80% of energy used in EU, so even if measures to improve the situation are

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