Monitoring of Sustainable Energy Action Plan in the city of Genoa

After the adoption of the Climate-Energy Package on 29 January 2008, the European Commission launched the Covenant of Mayors, an initiative adressed to European cities voluntary participation in implementing sustainable energy policies, aimed to improve energy efficiency, to increase RES and to reduce GHG emissions by 2020. The City of Genoa joined the initiative in February 2009 and in 2010 submitted the Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) drawn up in cooperation with UNIGE and the Energy Regional Agency of Liguria, a key document defining the energy policies the Municipality intends to adopt in different action fields in order to pursue the Covenant of Mayors objectives. Since it is a dynamic tool, the SEAP requires continuous monitoring for the evaluation of the actions progress, enabling a proper management and a consequent ongoing interventions adjustment in order to encourage an optimal SEAP governance from the point of view of energy and environment. This paper illustrates the approach for monitoring the SEAP of Genoa and the definition the criteria used to assess the degree of interventions implementation, to highlight the presence of critical issues affecting the actions performance and to understand the critical situations nature and then identify possible corrections. The estimate of the results obtained by SEAP in relation to the targets set is, in fact, a key element for the success of the Covenant of Mayors and, more generally, for the success of UE environmental policies for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.