Global status report on local renewable energy policies – Working draft

Jun 2009

City and local governments can play a key role in encouraging renewable energy at the local level. The multiple roles of these local governments as decision-makers, planning authorities, managers of municipal infrastructure, and role models for citizens and businesses are crucial to the global transition to renewable energy now underway. It is their political mandate that makes local governments ideal drivers of change to govern and guide their communities, provide services, and manage municipal assets.
While cities are beginning to include renewable energy in urban planning, there are still relatively few explicit local renewable energy policies. Rather, renewable energy is often addressed indirectly, within other themes such as sustainability, climate change, clean transportation, and “green” or “eco” programs. Often, energy savings and energy efficiency are the main priorities, which makes sense due to the enormous opportunities for reducing demand. Reduced demand also enables renewables to meet a larger share of the remaining demand. However, it is also true that the potential for renewable energy is often overlooked, shortchanged, or needlessly postponed within these broader themes and programs.
The “energy system of tomorrow,” a system that could enable the realization of a 100% renewable future, will consist of a partially distributed, decentralized energy system with embedded energy storage, demand side management, and modern communications technologies. It also will likely include a large role for electric vehicles charged from local renewable energy sources.
This report makes clear that there are many different approaches to renewable energy policy. Many factors influence the approaches that local governments choose. Some of these include geographic resource availability, financing availability, relationship to state and national governments, local regulatory authority and legal jurisdiction, social and cultural conditions, existence of stakeholder groups, local business interests, climate, type of building stock, and housing density and transport patterns. Since there are large variations in the types of local targets and policies, both within and between countries, it is difficult to generalize trends for renewable energy policies. Yet this report attempts to portray an overall “policy landscape.”

By: REN21, ISEP, ICLEI

 
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