COPPER - Planning for Locally Powered Cities

Funded by the Interreg North Sea programme, the Cities for Open and Participative Planning for Electricity Grid Resilience (COPPER) initiative is the first Europe-wide collaboration to test and demonstrate local energy action planning (LEAP), a bundle of techniques and activities that will enable local authorities to drive locally-powered cities. The upcoming local energy transition is a great opportunity for cleaner air, local green jobs, and a decarbonised power supply. But producing, consuming and managing more electricity locally presents new challenges for Europe’s towns and cities. To prepare Europe’s local authorities for their new role coordinating local energy systems, a European-wide alliance of 13 local energy system frontrunners has formed to spend four years testing new technologies, business models and planning methods.