PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Life-SMART project aims to increase the technical and organizational capacity of 22 small-sized public administrations in 5 target regions across 5 countries (Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal) to design, implement and manage their energy transition plans/strategies through an integrated approach, entailing: 1) activation, testing and consolidation of 5 inter-municipal technical structures (IMTS), formed by technicians from the involved municipalities and external experts expressly contracted (2 for each target area), which will be further trained with the support of partner organizations and thus be enabled to take the lead of the design, implementation and management of energy plans, in line with the requirements of the Covenant of Mayors; 2) definition of inter-municipal clean energy transition paths in the 5 target areas, with a gradually increasing level of development depending on the baseline situation of each territory (from a supra-local vision and strategy, up to the launch of local initiatives); 3) improvement of the ‘energy literacy’ of involved communities, to create the conditions for the informed engagement of stakeholders and citizens in the implementation of inter-municipal energy plans; 4) dissemination of the Life-SMART methodology, models and tools towards other territories with similar features, to foster the transfer and replication of project results. The involvement of CoM signatories, coordinators or supporters (both directly involved as beneficiaries, target areas, or key stakeholders, and targeted by networking activities) will give an important contribution in this sense. The composition of the consortium, involving a diversified typology of organizations relevant to energy planning and having a supra-local scope, will ensure cross-fertilization among different approaches to energy topics, as well as an effective coordination at district level and interesting replication opportunities in other contexts.