The energy and environmental plan of a province in the North East of Italy

This paper focus on Local Authorities and their key role in promoting sustainable development patterns. Energy Action Plan is the political-administrative tool to define the framework in which the different proposed actions are integrated. It describes a methodological approach in a fragmented context, such as Italy, characterized by small towns with less than 10’000 inhabitants that often lack of technical skills. The paper focus on Provinces and how they provide a platform for coordinating and boosting local actions. This paper describes how Local Energy Agency created a pool of experts coordinated by the university to develop a roadmap of strategies to achieve their goals in a territory of 900’000 inhabitants and 104 city councils. In this paper the methodology for the definition of the current energy consumption defined on the base of statistical analysis is shown; the energy consumption has been divided into sectors and energy vectors. Afterwards, based on identified growth trends, energy saving potential and enhance renewable energy have been evaluated, identifying objectives and suggesting alternatives to achieve different scenarios. Finally the paper focuses on the way in which the plan is elaborated in order to provide a proper communication for promoting actions to local stakeholders.