From previous surveys with regional authorities, energy agencies, local authorities we knew there were many needs around energy and climate data. That is where the idea of the project came from. To offer a targeted programme to local, regional authorities and their agencies, the ENERGee Watch project foresaw as one of its first activity to carry out a needs assessment exercise. A survey was launched at the end of 2020 to identify the needs and barriers, public authorities and their support organisations face in developing and monitoring their energy and climate plans.
The first overall analysis of the 53 answers from 42 organisations showed strong needs in most topics for each learning course. It led us to carry out an analysis per type of organisations to better understand the needs of each type of organisation and how to best meet these needs through the Energee Watch learning programme.
Explore the full Results of the needs assessment survey.
Courses and needs from different organisations
The group of local authorities showed a stronger need in Course 1 “Energy Data collection (acquisition and treatment)” with an average percentage of 32,7%. Conversely, the target group of local authorities presents the least strong need for Course 3 (“Indicators and strategies on adaptation to Climate Change”) with an average percentage of 29,8% of all participants representing a local authority.
The group of energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities showed a stronger need in Course 3 “Indicators and strategies on adaptation to Climate Change” with an average percentage of 51,8%.
Topics within each group and interest from organisations
The analysis was split in 3 groups:
• Local authorities
• Provincial/regional authorities and energy agencies
• Other (consultants, NGOs)
For the learning course 1 on Energy data collection (treatment and acquisition)
For local authorities, the vast majority of the topics addressed in this course follow the same trends, meaning that there is substantial need for learning in these topics. The topic of “Transport” presents an exception to this by having 32% of all participants that expressed limited need for further learning. The topics that present the strongest need are the following:
While for provincial/regional authorities and energy agencies results show different trends. First of all, they show less needs for capacity building in these topics than local authorities and the most needed topics are also very different:
For learning Course 2 on Monitoring, Reporting, Verification: follow-up of implementation of actions
For local authorities, all the topics addressed in this course are characterised by a strong need for further learning and in particular the following ones:
While the energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities prove to have less need for further learning in this course than local authorities and the most needed topics are also very different:
For learning course 3 on Indicators and strategies on adaptation to climate change
Many of the topics addressed in this course follow the same trends, meaning that there is substantial need for learning in these topics for local authorities. It is noteworthy that local authorities expressed by 50% no need for further learning regarding the topic of “Development of climate adaptation indicators for diagnosis and assessment”. They also stated no need by 30% when it comes to “tools and methods facilitating the development of a climate adaptation plan”.
The most needed topics are:
The energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities present limited needs in further learning across all topics of this course. Specifically, for the categories of “Development of climate adaptation indicators for diagnosis and assessment” and “Climate adaptation solutions investigation” they present much stronger need for further learning, when compared to the percentage of the “No need” answers.
For the learning course 4 on Data display, dissemination and validation by end-users, all target groups agree that the focus should be put mainly on “General data management and visualisation methods” (33% from the local authorities and 48% from the energy agencies and provincial/regional authorities.