The Strategy

The municipality’s EE financial strategy has to consider both the energy management needs and possibilities and the financial constraints. That means that on one hand it has to reflect the settlement’s energy strategy’s/action plan’s content and the financial needs of the energy investment plans listed in these documents. On the other hand, it has to consider the annual and long-term budget planning regulations and processes (deadlines, shares of dedicated tasks in the budget, decision making bodies, etc.) It also has to respect the particular regulations on debt-generating, which is a heavy burden at investment financing.

The financial strategy has to introduce wide scale of potential sources: above the well-known OPs it has to mention other EU programmes directly applicable at the Commission, EIB or any other central bodies (e.g ELENA, MLEI PDA). It has to pay attention to creating a favorable mix of financial sources for investments: involve funds for preparation, implementation, awareness raising, multiplication of results. Creating a portfolio of financial tools might also reduce the risk of an investment failing due to lack of funds, rejected applications or suspended Operational Programmes calls.

Creative funding methods such as crowd-funding should be listed as complementary, additional financial tools which might also improve the image of the municipality.

It is advisable to integrate incentives into the strategy. If the different departments and responsible bodies of the municipality are able to take further profits from the investment, the sound implementation of the planned actions can be better ensured. A good example for such a tool is the 50-50 system, where the maintainer and owner of a municipality building share the energy savings resulted by the investment. That means for instance, that the management a school has the possibility to keep and reinvest 50% of the energy savings, procure tools for children or further improve the energy performance of the building.