At local and regional level, the municipal or regional council is responsible for efforts to implement energy savings.
As a consequence of the political agreement on future energy-savings initiatives from 10 June 2005 and the energy policy agreement from 21 February 2008, Local Government Denmark and the Danish Regions have entered into an agreement to comply with the same requirements as the state institutions regarding energy-efficient procurement and realisation of energy savings with a payback time of up to five years.
In addition to the agreements on energy efficiency, all municipal and regional buildings are covered by the obligation to renew their energy label every five years
No comprehensive statements of energy consumption in municipal buildings are available, however many municipalities have been preparing green accounts for a number of years, and these accounts also typically include data on energy consumption.
Other initiatives
In addition to the statutory requirements, many initiatives are being taken to create more focus on energy conditions at municipal and regional level. Here are a few examples of such initiatives:
In October 2008 and April 2009 the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy designated six cities in Denmark as Energy Cities (Kolding, Copenhagen, Skive, Aarhus, Albertslund and Herning). This title entails that the municipality is to be at the forefront with regard to the climate and energy area. Read about the Energy Cities on the website
www.energibyer.dkAt the end of 2007, the
Danish Society for Conservation of Nature launched the initiative ‘Climate Communities’. A Climate Community commits itself to reducing its CO2 emissions by at least 2 per cent annually for a number of years.
The Electricity Saving Trust has introduced Curve Breaker Agreements with a number of municipalities. Municipalities that sign this agreement pledge themselves to reducing their annual electricity consumption by a certain percentage over an agreed number of years.