Developing municipal level mitigation action plans

Georgia, Europe and Central Asia

Georgia, a country with 4.5 million inhabitants, is currently developing a national low emission development strategy. At the local level, Covenant of Mayor signatory cities are planning to make significant contributions to this strategy and Georgia’s national mitigation efforts. Of the seven current signatories to the EU Covenant of Mayors (CoM) in Georgia, four have already submitted and have begun implementing Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAP). The SEAPs outline plans to achieve the commitment outlined in the CoM to reach GHG emission reductions of at least 20% by 2020.

The development of the SEAPs involved a variety of stakeholders, including local and national public sector, private actors, international donors and experts. A variety of barriers were faced, including a lack of data (and access to existing data), difficulty engaging the private sector, political issues, capacity constraints, definition of baselines, adapting an EU process to a transition country context, donor coordination, national and local level coordination, and limited financial resources.

Critical to the success of the development of the SEAPS were political commitment on national and local level, international financial support, technical assistance to local level & national coordinators, access to funds, motivated personnel and capacity building programs externally financed by the CoM.

Impact of activities
  • Created a framework to channel climate finance into city development projects: Providing an additional revenue stream for climate friendly projects. At the same time, the adoption of the CoM has contributed to a ‘green’ image for some cities.
  • Improved coordination between cities and municipalities as well as between local and national level government: The two departments in charge of national CoM coordination - the Climate Change Office of the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Energy – did not previously have a direct contact with municipalities.
  • Established GHG emissions reduction targets: In terms of GHG mitigation, in the SEAPs the goal is to achieve 24% - 29% emission reduction by 2020. For Tbilisi, this target is relative to a projected baseline, whereas for Rustavi and Gori, it is relative to a base year.
  • Improved urban planning capacity: There are also some co-benefits that were not the main goal of the CoM and SEAP activities. In Georgia, cities have significant data and planning deficits. Collecting and analysing their local data on energy consumption and transport in a systematic way is often being done for the first. For some local authorities the SEAP is the first comprehensive planning document for their municipality. It is expected that these experiences and the data collection will help to improve urban planning in general.
Institutions involved
  • Ministry of Energy
  • Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection
  • Municipality signatories to the Covenant of Mayors
  • DG ENER European Commission; CoM East Office
  • National association of local authorities
  • Local NGOs
  • DG DevCO, the EU delegation in Georgia and other EU institutions
  • Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure
  • Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development
  • Ministry of Finance; Municipal Development Fund Georgia
  • Partner cities (E.g. Saarbruecken for Tbilisi and Rostock for Batumi)
  • The Steering Committee of the Low Emission Development Strategy
Source details
Global Good Practice Analysis (GIZ UNDP)