Strengthening the Capacities of Municipal Technicians for the Energy Transition through Local GoGREEN
Planning and implementing the plans and projects required for the energy transition in European Union municipalities are relatively new tasks for many municipal officials, who often lack specific training in these areas. This creates an additional burden on their daily workload and, in practice, can lead to overexertion and put the quality of their work at risk.
Aware of these and other challenges faced by municipalities, the European Commission is supporting several projects funded through the LIFE Clean Energy Transition programme aimed at facilitating the transition at local level from different perspectives.
One of these initiatives is the European Project Local GoGREEN. The project seeks to empower local authorities and strengthen their capacities to design, implement and monitor ambitious short- and medium-term plans to accelerate the clean energy transition and achieve the 2030 climate objectives.
To achieve this, Local GoGREEN has established a transnational ecosystem for knowledge exchange that supports sustainable energy communities through capacity building, participatory decision-making and collaborative actions focused on the design and implementation of integrated climate and energy plans.
The project includes representatives from Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia and Italy, while municipalities from all participating countries except Estonia directly benefit from the initiative. In Spain, the project partners are the Municipality of Ponferrada and the Asociación de Empresas de Eficiencia Energéwtica (A3E).
The training activities, coordinated by the University of Tartu (Estonia), are being developed to a large extent by A3E, which has prepared common project content related to project financing, energy efficiency in buildings and the expansion of renewable energy sources.
In addition, the project has developed training materials covering sustainable transport and electric mobility, land-use planning to increase carbon dioxide absorption, and waste-to-energy conversion.
To facilitate access to these contents, an online training platform has been created, bringing together educational materials, thematic video lectures subtitled in all partner cities languages, and a series of webinars organised by the project members addressing practical cases related to the training topics. All materials produced within the project are freely accessible and available at no cost.
An important component of the training activities has been the in-person sessions organised in the six municipalities participating in the project. These 25-hour training sessions covered all thematic areas included in the project, as well as topics of particular local relevance.
In the case of Ponferrada, the sessions addressed sustainable mobility, building energy efficiency, urban renewable energy deployment, energy service companies, and the use of Energy Savings Certificates (CAEs) as mechanisms to monetise energy efficiency investments made by municipalities.
The face-to-face training sessions held in Ponferrada in September 2025 were attended by municipal technicians from different departments as well as elected representatives of the local council. In addition to A3E trainers, the sessions included contributions from the Regional Energy Agency of Castilla y León (EREN), as well as the companies FERROVIAL and ESIPE, with logistical support provided by the Environment and Innovation departments of the Municipality of Ponferrada.
Guillermo J. Escobar, CEM and CMVP
