Rakvere in the Covenant of Mayors

The official launch of the Covenant of Mayors took place in Brussels on 29 January. The Covenant of Mayors is a new and ambitious initiative of the European Commission bringing together the mayors of Europe's pioneering cities in their mutual efforts to improve energy efficiency in the urban environment. The Covenant of Mayors is a formal commitment by the cities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions beyond the European Union's objectives of 20% by 2020. Rakvere was the only Estonian city that participated in the official launch. Rakvere is first and foremost interested in starting the development plan for the city's street lighting. The implementation of the development plan would among other things mean exchanging streetlamps as well as regulating and making existing power lines more efficient. The city has also started the evaluation of energy efficiency of the municipal buildings (schools, kindergartens), the final result of which would be a specific action plan for turning the buildings energy efficient.

Rakvere has already got its experience in energy efficiency analysis. Last year the local municipality ordered energy audits for four most common types of apartment buildings. Even this was partly sponsored by European Union - the project was implemented within the frames of the energy saving project ESAM (Energy Strategic Asset Management) of the Intelligent Energy Europe programme. The audit was carried out by Aare Vabamagi who compiled the recommendations for the energy saving measures for different buildings. It is now possible to download a preprogrammed calculation sheet from Rakvere's website and calculate the energy costs of a house as well as the measures necessary for its future energy saving.

According to the Mayor of Rakvere, Andres Jaadla, the meetings with European collegues made it clear that energy efficiency in urban environment is regarded with utmost seriousness all over Europe. During the meetings with the vice mayor of London, Nicky Gavron and the vice mayor of Helsinki Pekka Sauri, the issue of how both big and small cities could contribute to making the urban environment more efficient, was discussed. European Commissioner for Energy, Andris Piebalgs, expressed content with the fact that the Baltic cities have joined the initiative of European Commission. He emphasised during his meeting with Mr Jaadla that even small cities can contribute to the pan-European movement of energy efficient cities and that Rakvere may have good experiences and practises worth introducing to other European cities.

The final draft of the Covenent of Mayors will be compiled during the first half of the year 2008. The European Commision offers both political as well as financial support for the cities in their preparation of the necessary documents.

Rakvere is planning to join UBC in 2008.