Vila Nova de Gaia (PT) hosted the LOCARBO project 5th Steering Group and the 6th TWT meeting on 25-26 September, which reconcile the 1st project phase milestone.

The two-day meeting agenda included public and closed sessions to provide to LOCARBO partnership and respective Managing Authorities representatives, but also local/regional political stakeholders, business entrepreneurs, and municipal technicians, the opportunity to share energy efficiency best practices and the work developed over the past two years within LOCARBO project.

The 1st day programme began with a public session launched with a welcome speech by the vice-Mayor of Vila Nova de Gaia municipality, followed by a synthetic overview on LOCARBO interregional learning phase results presented by the Lead Partner. Then, two moderated sessions exposed the municipal investments on Energy Efficiency in housing segment, the current policies and instruments to support Energy Efficiency in the Northern Region of Portugal, and a set of three local/regional good practices on Energy Efficiency services, organizational structures and technological solutions.

The last part of the meeting on the 1st day was dedicated to the presentation of the Mid-Term events experiences and the concluded Local/Regional Action Plans, giving a special emphasis to the most innovative and relevant action lines that will in fact influence the corresponding political instruments. The Local/Regional Action Plans are now ready to be put into practice by the respective partners who are focused on exploring innovative action lines on the territories they represent.

The 2nd day comprised more dedicated internal partnership activities to discuss technical and financial project issues and evaluate the results obtained within Phase 1 of LOCARBO, thus completing this remarkable event.