Trikala's Pilot City Activity: Energy4All
Background
Decarbonisation of the building sector in the Municipality of Trikala is a fundamental pillar of the city’s climate neutrality journey. This is evident as almost 84% of the total city’s emissions stems from buildings and infrastructure.
At one hand, the city has recognised early on that it is necessary to create the conditions to force a wave of deep renovation of its’ building stock and at the same time to harness the use of smart technologies in energy management.
This transformative journey is underpinned by Energy4All, a pioneering initiative aimed at ushering the building sector into a zero-emissions future through a community-driven business model, integrating an Energy Service Office & Energy Community (EC) with a comprehensive Smart Energy Management (SEM) system across critical infrastructure.
Description of Activities
Central to achieving Trikala’s carbon neutrality goals is the Climate Neutrality Hub, which orchestrates the seamless integration of monitoring, management, and reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This hub brings together essential components like the Energy Service Office, Climate Neutrality Observatory, GHG Emissions Platform, and the Energy Community setup, creating a holistic framework for sustainable urban energy management.
The initiative extends to crafting a climate-friendly smart grid that involves meticulously mapping infrastructure and stakeholders, harnessing available data for smart grid development, and creating a database for data integration. This effort is crucial for enabling efficient energy distribution and usage across the city.
Further enhancing Trikala’s energy management is the development of an Infrastructure Digital Twin and a SEM system. These innovative tools are designed to optimize energy usage in real-time across the community’s infrastructure and buildings, marking a significant leap towards enhanced energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions.
Objective
To mitigate stationary energy emissions through the development of an inclusive and community-based business model underpinned by an innovative governance scheme (i.e. a Climate Neutrality Hub) to promote energy efficiency and energy democracy.
Are the pilot activities building upon or part of a previous and/or existing activity?
Trikala has been actively involved in various initiatives related to the reduction of static energy and building efficiency, namely:
- Energy retrofitting in municipal buildings (total area 25.000 m²)
- Improvement of energy efficiency in 14 Municipal buildings through subsidies of €11M from the Ministry of the Environment and Energy, “ELECTRA” programme
- Development of a solar power plant of 4.6MW to cover electricity demand of the Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Company
- Establishment of the first Municipal Energy Community in 2022
- €6,9M funding from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to deploy smart city solutions in a city-wide level. Approximately €2M is dedicated at energy efficiency interventions
- VILAWATT – UIA, aimed at pilots and methodologies to boost the energy transition process by setting up public-private-citizen partnerships
- Development of the Electric Vehicle Charging Plan for the installation of 84 publicly accessible EV charging pointshere
Which emissions domains will the pilot activities address?
Systemic transformation – levers of change the pilot activities will exploit
Stakeholder types that the city would like to engage in the pilot activities
Transferable features of the pilot activities to a Twin City/ies
- The energy community – as a blueprint for community-based business model for climate neutrality.
- The Energy Service Office as a consultancy, monitoring and facilitating structure to enhance energy renovation rate in privately owned building.
- The integrated technology for the establishment of a Smart Energy System – as a knowledge exchange hub where cities across Europe can share experiences, best practices, and lessons learned.
- Technologies – i.e. smart grids, and energy optimization – with an emphasis on data collection, analysis, and utilization for informed decision-making on energy efficiency and optimization.
- Toolbox for citizen engagement – collecting the learnings, insights, and recommendations from capacity building activities, training programs and workshops.
This answer is not exhaustive and simply an indicative one.
Enabling conditions that will support the successful replication of your pilot activities in the Twin City
- A supportive social and institutional framework that aids the transition to zero-energy buildings and infrastructure.
- An encouraging atmosphere and past successful experiences that foster trust among citizens, technical experts, and authorities, enabling the development of a shared vision.
- Comprehensive mapping and assessment of barriers that need to be addressed to facilitate the desired transformations. – Endorsement and supportive policies from local and regional authorities.
- A well-defined regulatory framework for financing energy retrofits through energy communities.
- Mechanisms to motivate stakeholder participation, such as well-documented procedures, transparent planning, and shared and collaboratively created knowledge.
- Access to a variety of funding and financing options to create a conducive environment for experimentation.
This answer is not exhaustive and simply an indicative one.
What does the city want to learn from Twin City/ies?
- Engaging multiple stakeholders in co-creation of large-scale energy retrofit projects
- Implementing citizen engagement and learning how to engage all citizen groups, including vulnerable communities
- Changing established behaviours on climate action
- Innovative funding tools and preparation for securing resources
- Low-cost and fast-track community projects related to awareness raising on energy efficiency, sustainable energy and energy communities
This answer is not exhaustive and simply an indicative one.
