STEP-UP - brings together excellence on energy planning from Glasgow; Ghent; Riga; and Gothenburg – 4 ambitious, northern European, historic, port cities together with their industrial and research partners.The initiative is supported at the highest political level in all 4 cities – and city leaders will be active in the project throughout its life, ensuring it delivers its objectives, and has clear and significant impact in the partner cities and beyond.STEP-UP takes an integrated approach to energy planning, integrated project design, and implementation by addressing 3 vital themes together: energy and technology; economics; organisation and stakeholders.STEP-UP partner cities will significantly enhance their Covenant of Mayors Strategic Energy Action Plans (SEAPs) to tackle all three Europe 2020 energy targets: energy efficiency / energy reduction; growth of renewable energy; carbon emissions reduction.STEP-UP will draw on the partner cities’ experience of integrated energy planning, and will build on this through learning and adapting experience from other cities and partners to create a coherent and easy-to-use model for energy planning. This model will be adopted in multiple cities to deliver faster and greater impacts for Europe’s 2020 energy targets – and wider policy objectives such as improving security of energy supplies, urban regeneration, economic growth, and tackling fuel poverty – making these cities better places to live, work, learn, and do business.Key deliverables are:An integrated model for delivering ambitious realistic integrated SEAPs;Enhanced SEAPs in all partner cities;Innovative energy projects in all partner cities that integrate different technologies and stakeholders;A learning network of cities to replicate this action across Europe;Work with the Central Party School to replicate this model in China;Training programmes for professionalsA new Masters Course on Sustainable city planning and implementation.