ENCO ENERGIE CONSULTING AG

Their core work

ENCO Energie Consulting AG is a Swiss energy consulting firm specializing in sustainable energy and climate action planning for local and regional authorities. Their work sits at the intersection of energy policy, institutional governance, and community engagement — helping municipalities build the organizational structures needed to deliver on energy transition commitments. They support the development and institutionalization of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs), operating within EU frameworks such as the Covenant of Mayors. Unlike engineering firms, their value is in governance design, multi-level coordination, and enabling local energy coalitions to function effectively over the long term.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

ENCO's early work (CoME EASY, 2018) centered on connecting local energy planning with EU-level frameworks — essentially a technical alignment task between different policy instruments and standards. Their more recent project (2ISECAP, 2021) shows a clear shift toward the institutional and social dimensions: building governance capacity, establishing local energy coalitions, and embedding public engagement into planning processes. The direction of travel is from policy synchronization to governance transformation — from "how do we align with EU requirements?" to "how do we make energy planning a permanent feature of how local governments operate?"

ENCO is moving deeper into the governance and capacity-building end of energy transition, where the bottleneck is no longer technology but institutional will and public engagement — a growing need as EU climate commitments require permanent structural change in local government.

How they like to work

ENCO joins projects as a specialist contributor rather than leading them — both H2020 participations were as partner, never coordinator. Despite this, they engage in large, internationally diverse consortia: 28 distinct partners across 13 countries across just 2 projects is an unusually broad network for a small SME. Their exclusive focus on Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) rather than R&D projects confirms they bring process expertise, stakeholder management capability, and policy know-how — not laboratory or technical R&D capacity.

ENCO has built connections with 28 distinct partner organizations across 13 countries through just 2 projects — a notably broad network relative to their size. Their partnerships likely span local authorities, regional energy agencies, and policy bodies typical of Covenant of Mayors-aligned consortia across multiple EU member states.

What sets them apart

ENCO fills a specific gap that technical energy firms cannot: they translate EU energy policy requirements into workable governance structures for local authorities who lack the institutional capacity to act on those requirements alone. Most energy consultancies focus on technology or engineering; ENCO focuses on the organizational and governance side, which is often the real barrier to energy transition implementation at the local level. As a Swiss SME operating outside the EU, they bring a neutral perspective that can be a practical asset in diverse multi-country consortia.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CoME EASY
  Largest funding received (EUR 210,625) and addressed a pan-European coordination challenge — synchronizing the Covenant of Mayors with multiple EU energy and climate initiatives, directly relevant to hundreds of European municipalities.
• 2ISECAP
  Most recent and conceptually mature project (2021-2024), tackling the institutionalization of energy action plans — embedding climate governance into the permanent structures of local authorities rather than treating it as a one-off planning exercise.