Energy Independence as a Municipal Matter: What the Forum in Portugal Showed
Guimarães — a city in northern Portugal with a population of 157,000 — hosted three hundred representatives from thirty countries at the annual Energy Cities forum in April. The forum ran for three days, from 28 to 30 April, and was built around the theme "Nurturing the Roots." Behind the title lies a concrete situation: the next EU budget promises cities fewer resources, and this was felt in most of the discussions. The organisation's president and mayor of Leuven, Belgium, Mohamed Ridouani, said that without genuine inclusion, the most vulnerable are left without protection and the most powerful without limits.
Energy Cities has existed since 1990 and brings together over a thousand local authorities from thirty countries. It does not issue grants or adopt directives — it connects cities so they can find partners and avoid reinventing the wheel. The first day opened with a fair of local initiatives where cities showed what they had. Then came the city tours. A former industrial district has been converted into an innovation hub. The Guimagym gymnastics academy is nearly independent of the external grid, combining bio-based materials, renewable sources, and a well-designed building. The first municipal energy community is embedded in a UNESCO-protected area with solar infrastructure that tourists probably never notice. A separate route focused on housing — participants saw a public student housing building and heard about the AvePark strategy, which aims to combine innovative construction models with affordability. They also visited the ten-hectare community garden on urban wetlands, Horta Pedagógica, where a parallel workshop on food security took place.
Benedek Jávor, head of Budapest's representation to the EU, said something that gets spoken less often in these rooms than it should. Cities are far more pro-European than their national governments, yet they have the least say in budget decisions in Brussels. The Mayors' Club session brought together elected representatives to discuss practical obstacles — permitting procedures, limited grid capacity, relations with distribution system operators. There was also a separate discussion on indirect consumption, textiles, repair culture, and the hidden emissions of fast fashion.
The Cities' Stories session brought together experience from Vienna, Dijon, Valencia, Barcelona, Lisbon, Porto, Assen, Arnhem, and cities from Turkey and Algeria. A closed matchmaking session for network members also took place, where cities pitched ideas and searched for partners under open calls from the LIFE and EUI programmes.
Ukrainian structures are also among the network's members. The Association of Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine, founded in 2007 in Lviv, has been a collective member of Energy Cities since 2009 and is a national support structure for the Covenant of Mayors in Ukraine. It is also the national office of the European Energy Award and an associate partner of the European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the Recovery of Ukraine. The association currently unites over 100 cities, from Lutsk and Ternopil to Kramatorsk and Mykolaiv; some members are in temporarily occupied territories — Berdyansk, Alchevsk, Bakhmut. Lviv and Kyiv hold individual membership in the network.
What was on display in Guimarães — energy communities, decentralised generation, buildings with minimal dependence on external grids — is a necessity for Ukrainian cities. After several years of targeted Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, energy resilience has become a municipal priority in dozens of communities. Forums like this one are among the few places where cities can find both the models and the partners at the same time.
Guimarães is better suited for such an event than most European cities. Its medieval centre is under UNESCO protection; in 2012 it was the European Capital of Culture, in 2013 the European City of Sport, and this year it holds the title of European Green Capital. 97% of residents say the air quality in the city is good — and that is monitoring data, not a line from a tourist brochure. The city long ago adopted the motto "one planet city" and, judging by what was shown to forum participants, is doing its best to live up to it.
Next year the forum will be hosted by Athens.
The European Commission has also published a list of cities competing for the title of European Green Capital 2028. Only one Ukrainian city made the list — Ternopil. In total, 17 cities from across Europe will compete for the title. Cities will be assessed against 7 criteria, and the winning city will receive €600,000.