zoom, March 25, 2021. The European energy transition has hardly made headlines since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the transformation of energy systems in Europe remains one of the most important challenges and opportunities. The project Energiewende Twinning Towns, which was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and carried out by the Agency for Renewable Energy in collaboration with the Humboldt-Viadrina Goverance Platform, demonstrates how the transformation can be advanced concretely at the municipal level. With a final digital conference, the project is saying goodbye for the time being to the city pairs from Germany, Ireland, Greece, the Netherlands and Poland.

Municipalities play a key role in the European energy transition: this is where a large part of European legislation is implemented, this is where renewable energy plants are built, and this is where direct contact with citizens takes place, without whose acceptance and participation the energy transition is not feasible.

Over the last two years, the Energiewende Twinning Towns project has accompanied a total of ten European municipalities in five city pairs as they made progress towards the local energy transition and contributed to an exchange across national borders. The final conference on March 25, 2021, planned to take place in Berlin, had to be postponed repeatedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic,and was ultimately moved entirely to the digital space. In the meantime, a short film has been made about why municipalities and European cooperation are so important for the success of the energy transition. Many thanks to the representatives of the twin towns Alheim (DE)/ Dunleer (IRL), Braunsbedra (DE)/ Kozani (GR), Marburg (DE)/ Koscierzyna (PL), Pfaffenhofen (DE)/ Galway (IRL) and Steinhagen (DE)/ Woerden (NL), the German Foreign Office and Ellery Studio, who inspired this film and brought it to life. Phasing out coal, transforming the energy system, climate education for children and youth, citizen dialogues, energy cooperatives – all these and many more topics were discussed in the European exchange project. We hope that the film will inspire other partner cities to take joint initiatives for the energy transition, to jointly identify points of connection and synergy, and thus to contribute to joint learning about the energy transition as well as to European understanding at the same time.

The project “Energiewende Twinning Towns”, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, has been running since 2018 in cooperation between the HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform and the Agency for Renewable Energies. As practice partners, the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU) and the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DGStB) have been supporting the project activities, which aim to strengthen the exchange of knowledge and technology between German and European municipalities through bilateral workshops and multilateral online meetings as well as the kick-off and final conference.