Setting targets for local energy planning: Critical assessment and a new approach

Abstract

Targets are crucial to the definition, effort and investment implied in any plan. The way how they are set should therefore be carefully thought and decided. In the context of local energy planning, however, the increasingly active attitude of local stakeholders has not yet been corresponded by an evolution on the way how targets are set. The aim of this work is to review how targets are currently defined and, after justification is found, to develop a new methodology for target setting in the context of local energy planning, that can guide local authorities and other stakeholders to act towards global climate change mitigation and other policy objectives.This paper begins with a critical assessment of existing targets set in the context of local energy planning, in order to understand how they were defined and the implications of different methodological choices. Here, the drawbacks found on current practices call for the need of a new methodology that answers to two fundamental requisites: being able to reflect local characteristics and past accountability, by taking into account the starting point; and being quantitatively coherent with existing long-term goals. The paper then presents an alternative approach for target setting that corresponds to the referred requisites, and illustrates the implications through the application to nine municipalities in the Metropolitan Area of Porto.