On 1 July 2024 AISFOR participated to the Study Tour of Portuguese LIFE Programme Officials in Rome, at the Italian Ministry for the Environment and Energy Security.

This initiative was part of the "Portugal Capacity Building for Better Use of LIFE II" project (LIFE21-CAP-PT-LIFE CAP PT II).

The session kicked off with a roundtable presentation and was followed by an overview of the LIFE CAP PT II project activities, which provided a comprehensive insight into the project's objectives and progress. The project is a national capacity building project for the LIFE Programme, which aims to improve the overall Portuguese capacity to participate in this programme and promote its use by potential national applicants, increasing the number and quality of projects that are submitted annually.

In this context, the Italian LIFE National Contact Point Team shared their extensive experience and best practices in supporting applicants and beneficiaries of the LIFE Programme in Italy.

Furthermore, the Portuguese officials engaged with representatives from notable Italian LIFE Clean Energy Transition (CET) projects. These included:

- CONNECT HEAT - Community engagement for clean heat.

- ENTRACK - Empowering local and regional authorities to design clean energy transition plans.

- LEAP to 11 - Linking energy audit and energy management system policies towards new EED article 11.

- LIFE CoolLIFE - Driving a sustainable future in space cooling.

Each project representative provided a technical presentation, sharing their approaches and successful strategies employed. In this framework, the early results of ENTRACK and its innovative activities were presented, including its multi-governance approach, the taxonomy of energy plans, and the ethnography work with Climate Explorers.

The first day of Study Tour was an excellent occasion to find synergies among the Italian and Portugues colleagues and enhance implementation of the LIFE Programme, setting a positive tone for the rest of the trip!