The voluntary-based initiative Covenant of Mayors (CoM) focused on the active role of local authorities and increased its targets by 2016, through the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) in terms of GHG reduction from 20% to 40% by 2030. In actual fact, the SECAP, intended as an urban planning tool, has the potential to improve the resilience of the EU Municipalities to climate-change, developing adaptation/mitigation actions and increasing the ‘environmental awareness’ of the involved actors. From a planning point of view, we affirm that the CoM started a new season of urban planning in Europe that covers the planning demand in the domain of implementing sustainable territorial development objectives. It unlocks the current ineffective planning systems and represents a remarkable practice promoting feasible framework projects for public and private investments. This paper proposes a methodological proposal to exploit this spread of SECAPs in the EU, including the systemic strategic planning approach in the process of SECAP design and ensuring an integrated vision of city development over the list of actions per sector required by the Global CoM procedures. Besides the methodological proposal, a review of the major EU energy policies is provided and relevant Best Practices are presented.

European climate policy, since the 1990s, has developed incrementally and supported programs, plans and actions for sustainable, clean and secure energy. Additionally, climate-change adaptation issues have been tackled through Mayors Adapt since 2016. The Covenant of Mayors (CoM), a volunteer movement of local administrators established in 2008, set a target of a 20% reduction in CO₂ emissions by 2020. The CoM has launched a new season on energy planning in Europe based on Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs), defining actions for selected intervention sectors. The aim of the work was to evaluate the state of the Italian CoM signatories, assessing the results achieved in terms of the Municipalities involved (CoM signatories), the SEAPs developed and the Monitoring Reports submitted. Specifically, the analysis of the Monitoring Reports data represents a relevant step needed in order to formulate some critical appraisals concerning the performance level of CoM adoption at a national scale, in terms of the commitment levels, goals achieved and actions completed or in progress. The paper also compares national figures with a regional detailed survey developed for the Basilicata Region. It represents a benchmark useful for interpreting the general results derived from the CoM official data and a marker for pointing out suggestions for improving the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) adoption procedures.

Over the years, energy saving and climate change have sparked a challenge in developing innovative spatial and urban planning tools, methods, and approaches for urban areas and territorial management. This challenge has pointed out a gap in the traditional planning framework in tackling energy and climate issues, highlighting the need for renovated spatial planning practices. The current effective measures carried out by the complex network of stakeholders (public and private) are fragmented, and the role of city networks in shaping decisions and interventions has emerged. In particular, among the approaches for urban and territorial planning and the development of climate-responsive measures, this research adopts a specific focus on voluntary planning. The authors, through a literature review and an analysis of nine city networks, investigated how this approach addresses energy and climate issues and how it is linked to the city networks in designing investments and interventions within the urban context. From the authors’ perspective, city networks are the operative component in designing local experiences and applications, contributing to achievement of the global energy and climate targets according to the current policies. In this context, successful results with respect to climate and energy challenges is expressed in the degree of the awareness and the commitment achieved by the local communities. Moreover, reaching the climate and energy goals is a representation of the outcome of the interaction between the (public or private) actors involved and the degree of a city’s climate-responsiveness, rather than from a normative constraint or an institutional framework.