Covenant Supporters: Implementation Report 2024

To comply with their sustainability commitment, many of the signatory municipalities of the Covenant of Mayors receive the support of other organizations such as energy agencies. Each year, the Covenant sends a survey to those “Supporters” to inquire about their actions, successes and difficulties, as well as the ones of the municipalities they support.

This year’s survey sought in particular to gather insights on multilevel governance, climate adaptation, and, following the Covenant’s Cities Heat Detox campaign, the question of decarbonization of heating and cooling plans. 27 organizations from 18 countries, representing a total of 2251 local and regional governments responded to the survey, painting a contrasting picture of the situation in 2024.

Supporters largely focused on their role as intermediaries

When it comes to their interaction with multiple levels of governance, the survey shows a clear preference of Supporters for acting in conjunction with other stakeholders rather than acting on their own, with 70% reporting serving as intermediaries between other stakeholders and the municipalities and 56% developing joint action with other stakeholders, overperforming the other types of action by more than 40 points.

Climate resilience, funding, and energy poverty needing the most support

Respondents stressed climate change adaptation, financing, and energy poverty as the priority for several areas. They figure among the two most common subjects requiring awareness raising (85% of respondents mentioning adaptation and 67% energy poverty) and make the three most common necessitating capacity building (adaptation 52%, financing opportunities 44%, energy poverty 37%). 81% of respondents consider that capacity-building support on financing opportunities is needed to achieve the 2030 and 2050 climate goals.

Although the necessity of additional funding for the activities related to the Covenant of Mayors remains a general issue, important disparities among sources and allocation of this funding highlight areas of underexploited potential. Whereas the EU, regional governments and agencies, as well as their national counterparts are identified by half to two-thirds of the respondents as direct sources of funding, other sources such as recovery funds or public-private partnerships are mentioned by less than one supporter in twelve. Likewise, national and regional funding often cover SECAP development and implementation, but rarely monitoring and reporting.

Municipalities unsure of meeting renewed ambitions

Two-thirds of the supporters interrogated stated that the municipalities they interact with either focus on the Covenant’s initial baseline of 40% GHG emission reduction by 2030 or perceive the Covenant’s targets as too ambitious for their territory. However, only one-third of the respondents identified more raising awareness about the targets as a capacity-building necessity for achieving EU 2030 and 2050 climate goals, suggesting a real difficulty for signatories to reach the ideal goal of a 55% GHG emission reduction by 2030.

Now more than ever, municipalities and their supporters need assistance to ramp up their activities and stay in line with the EU climate objectives. You can find all the results mentioned in this article and more in the Covenant of Mayors’ Supporters Report 2024 available in the Downloads section of this page.