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Description
The hub of the County of Lääne-Virumaa and the largest of 8 municipalities of the county, the Town of Rakvere was the first municipality in Estonia that signed the Covenant of Mayors and composed a Sustainable Energy Action Plan. The targets set forth by the Plan have been reached by now and the town is planning to draw up a new plan with new targets to be reached by year 2035.
The importance of the green transition as well as the significance of the local municipality to take the leading role in taking action towards it, is acknowledged by the rest of the 7 municipalities of the County. In order to achieve a systematic and comprehensive approach in the matter, the 7 municipalities intend to draw up a common Sustainable Energy Climate Action Plan as the outcome of the present project.
The Plan will certainly handle the specific aspects of every municipality, however, it will also address challenges that are shared in entire county since there are factors and processes that are shared and cannot be tackled individually (e.g. transport).
The SECAP that will be drawn as the result of the present project will serve as an action plan and a tool for each and every municipality but also for entire county in order to ensure the sustainable development of the region and make it more attractive for the inhabitants of the region. The plan will describe the goals and activities of different areas helping to reduce the impact on the environment and climate and reach the new level of usage and production of renewable energy. The long term goal of the project is also to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions as well as the ecological footprint. All the municipalities have taken the obligation to allign and harmonize their strategy documents up to date with the SECAP.
Summary of project results
Lääne-Virumaa Climate change mitigation and adaptation plan has been drafted and approved.
Summary of bilateral results
The project benefited from the NOrwegian partner Agder Fylkeskommune- they shared Norwegian expertise in online-seminars. The Project also visited their partner in Norway and shared their best practices. As this project had good relations with two other County projects, they had joint-seminars and other project Donor State partners also contributed to bilateral cooperation (City of Oslo and Iceland). Once the Climate change mitigation and adaptation plan will be executed, then there are possible further bilateral cooperation.