Environmental strategy of the Grand Genève regional project
2017
Cross-border cooperation is a partnership between private or public players, separated by a State border, whose actions have repercussions at regional and local level on either side of the border. Within the European area, 360° mobility across the border, the projects and policies that accompany this mobility in territories close to the border, and the progressive cross-border integration that this cooperation builds and gives rise to cross-border territories, characterise different experiences. To illustrate the results of more than 20 years of cooperation within the Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière (MOT), 20 unique experiments conducted by MOT members for the benefit of the inhabitants of cross-border territories were highlighted. In the field of energy transition, neither climate nor energy know borders. Yet public policies are implemented within national frameworks that differ. Cross-border territories, the laboratories of European integration, bring these differences together. Moreover, as players in the energy transition, they can take full advantage of its development opportunities. Case study: the environmental strategy of the Greater Geneva area project.
In addition to the major technical, environmental and economic challenges posed by energy, the cross-border context poses difficulties arising from disparities in regulatory, tax and legal regimes. Cooperation in this area is essential to ensure security of supply on both sides of the border and full integration of the European energy market. While the development of renewable energies and the promotion of energy efficiency can bring economic and financial benefits in the medium and long term, in the short term they represent costly investments that can be pooled across borders.
In 2010, the players in the Greater Geneva conurbation got together to incorporate an energy-climate approach into the Franco-Vaud-Geneva conurbation project. The third generation of the agglomeration project, published in 2016, set new objectives and developed new practical applications, such as :
-
G2AME (Grand Genève Air Modèle Émissions), a tool for measuring pollution levels on a cross-border scale,
-
The launch of a climate-energy initiative,
-
The organisation, for the first time on a cross-border territory, of the European Energy Transition Conference in January 2018.
This event involves other members of the MOT network: ENEDIS is one of the main partners and the CNFPT will be offering training courses on this occasion.
The region is rich in opportunities and resources - lake, agricultural and green waste, geothermal energy, solar energy, wood - and the local population is looking to the public authorities for practical solutions in terms of sustainable public transport, access to low-energy housing, training, advice and funding.