João Pedro Gouveia at the round table on "Strengthening Local Climate Action through International Collaboration"
Miguel Macias Sequeira as the keynote speaker with the topic "Renewable Energy Communities and the Just Transition"

As National Coordinator, ADENE is organizing the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy on November 25 and 26, 2025, at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) in Lisbon.

This year's National Meeting of the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy once again highlights the role of local authorities in meeting national and European climate action targets, focusing on their role in decentralized renewable energy production through Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) and Collective Self-Consumption (CSC), accelerating the decarbonization of their territories and promoting solutions with benefits for the entire community.

The establishment and management of Renewable Energy Communities is a challenge that municipalities embraced early on, but significant barriers to their implementation persist. This meeting aims to discuss what is already being done and what remains to be done to simplify the local application of this important instrument. Furthermore, RECs can be municipal public policy instruments with cross-cutting impacts, as they not only contribute to territorial decarbonization but can also enable municipalities to boost certain business or industrial sectors or promote the fight against one of the main factors of energy poverty, through access to clean energy and reduced household energy bills. Inspiring examples will be presented of how municipalities are implementing RECs in an integrated strategy for the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of their territories.

At this edition, the Energy and Behaviour Forum will also be launched, a European Commission initiative to support local authorities in developing projects, campaigns, and initiatives to promote changes in energy-related behaviors. The Energy and Behaviour Forum emerges with the objective of bringing together efforts and promoting the adoption of best practices throughout Europe. It is a digital platform that aims to drive and share behavioral practices for energy efficiency, as well as support local and regional authorities in integrating behavioral perspectives into the design and implementation of energy efficiency policies and measures. The project, funded by the European Commission and led by the VITO institute, involves 12 partners from various European countries, including ADENE, and runs from March 2025 through the end of 2026.

On the 2nd day of the event, the Presidency and Secretariat of the European Energy Agencies Network (EnR Network) will hold the EnR Thinking Group Meeting 2025. This reflection meeting will be dedicated to local climate action, with the objective of discussing possible collaboration pathways and the role of National Energy Agencies in this domain. At this session, the work developed to date by the network will be presented, and various external stakeholders will be invited to share experiences and promote dialogue on different alternatives to strengthen support for local and regional authorities.