ENEA PAES: A Web Platform for Supporting Italian Municipalities in Sustainable Energy Action Plan

Abstract

The Covenant of Mayors promotes the Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP), aiming to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with the European Union’s 2030 and 2050 targets. The Covenant signatories could take enormous advantage from a digital platform that allows SEAP drafting also to no technically skilled users, like majority of them are. The Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) has developed the PAES platform in order to provide digital support to public administrations (PA) adhering to the Covenant of Mayors. The platform exploits open data and it is fed by energetic data aggregated on a municipal level. The platform offers appropriate functionalities for baseline CO2 emissions inventory (BEI) filling out and a best practice (BP) simulation tool. The latter allows to contextualize each BP and to estimate its effects in terms of the main GHG emission. The BP showing the best estimation results can then be converted into concrete adaptation actions. So, this digital system facilitates local Italian municipalities in the strategic planning and monitoring of adaptation actions taken over time.