Green Mayors Alliance: Municipalities Leading the Just Transition in the Western Balkans

Just Green Transition

Date 22 September 2025

The green transition in the Western Balkans will not be decided in national capitals alone. It will be won or lost in towns and municipalities where people live, where public infrastructure is managed, where schools can become energy hubs, and where local leaders either have the tools to act or don’t. The Green Mayors Alliance is OSF-WB’s answer to this reality: a regional platform that gives municipalities a collective voice, shared capacity for project development, and a direct pathway to EU and international financing.

About the Alliance

The Green Mayors Alliance (GMA) was formally launched at the Green Mayors Forum on 22 September 2025 in Durrës, Albania, when mayors and municipal representatives from 19 municipalities across Western Balkan countries signed a Joint Declaration committing to a just and locally led green transition.

The Alliance builds on the Sunny Schools Initiative, OSF-WB’s five-year proof of concept demonstrating that solar energy in schools can generate not only clean energy and cost savings, but also civic participation, community ownership, and municipal ambition. Where Sunny Schools demonstrated what is possible, the GMA provides the platform to scale it.

The GMA offers shared space for project identification and development, peer learning across borders, and collective advocacy with national governments and regional institutions. It places particular emphasis on smaller municipalities, which are often excluded from regional initiatives but are critical to ensuring that the transition is both politically stable and socially fair.

GMA Aspirations

Through the Joint Declaration, founding members commit to four core areas of work:

Energy Democracy & Community Power

Citizen-driven energy models, cooperatives, and inclusive local ownership rooted in Sunny Schools experience.

Act Boldly for Net Zero

Local climate action plans, people-centered green infrastructure, emission reductions across energy, mobility, and waste.

Unlock Green Finance for Local Change

Municipal projects aligned with WBIF, IPA III, and the EU Growth Plan, with internal capacity to access green finance.

Champion Justice Across All Communities

No one left behind – special focus on coal-dependent areas, underserved communities, and social equity in transition.

The Initiative Ecosystem

The GMA connects three mutually reinforcing initiatives that together span infrastructure, governance, and digital innovation:

Foundation

Sunny Schools

Since 2021, Sunny Schools has brought solar energy to 111 schools across 39 municipalities in the WB, generating around 2.5 million kWh and $250,000 in community savings annually. In 2025, 46 municipalities applied in an OSF-WB open call for expansion with co-funding. Schools serve as the primary entry point: they create trust, civic engagement, and visible proof that the green transition can work at the local level.

Regional Platform

Green Mayors Alliance

Launched in September 2025 in Durrës, the GMA brings together 19 municipalities across the Western Balkans under a Joint Declaration. It serves as a shared platform for project development, peer learning, and collective advocacy – helping municipalities build investment pipelines and ensuring that smaller municipalities can access support they could not access alone. With support from NALED and an AI-based project development tool by Aitema, members are better equipped to prepare high-quality proposals aligned with EU and regional financing instruments.

Digital Innovation

AI4Society

Embedded within the GMA, AI4Society connects youth digital innovators with real municipal challenges – particularly in energy monitoring and public services. Through hackathons, development sprints, and structured validation, youth-developed tools are matched with GMA municipalities for deployment. Partners include Belgrade Open School, Bonevet, Reputeo, and EIT Community Hubs. By the end of 2026, the initiative aims for 2-3 validated tools and at least 3 municipalities committing to adoption.

Sunny Schools Initiative

Green Mayors Forum

Why Municipalities, Why Now

Municipalities across the Western Balkans are at a decisive moment. The EU financial framework has made unprecedented funding available, but accessing it requires project pipelines, technical capacity, and the ability to present municipal needs credibly in Brussels. Most municipalities, especially smaller ones outside capitals, lack all three.

At the same time, EU directives are already reshaping what municipalities are expected to deliver, even before accession. Those represent conditions under which EU-aligned investment flows to the region.

OSF-WB’s key insight, confirmed by five years of Sunny Schools and by the Green Mayors Forum in September 2025: municipalities do not need another parallel system. They need a voice in EU and regional spaces and support in navigating complex processes. The GMA is built around that insight.

Progress to Date

Following the September 2025 launch, OSF-WB is advancing the operationalization of the GMA’s in 2026. Key milestones include:

1	Strong demand for Sunny Schools expansion – in 2025, 46 municipalities applied on Open Call to expand Sunny Schools with co-funding commitments, demonstrating strong demand beyond the 19 founding members.
2	Reinvestment of savings – savings generated through solar installations are already being reinvested into local priorities, reinforcing the model’s sustainability and social legitimacy.
3	Governance structure under development – to coordinate activities, facilitate peer learning, and support project development across member municipalities.
4	Emerging energy communities – municipalities including Stip, Elbasan, Pirot, Lopare and Zivinice are advancing early models of energy communities, introducing shared ownership and management of locally generated renewable energy.
5	AI4Society initiative underway, with the first round of municipal digital solutions and youth hackathons launched in 2026.
6	Regional peer learning activities underway, with municipalities exchanging experiences on project development, energy communities, and spatial planning reform.

Regional Impact

Across the Western Balkans, the green transition is no longer an abstract policy objective. It is becoming a locally owned, visible, and investable process.

Through the Sunny Schools Initiative, communities have seen that the green transition can directly improve everyday life, from better school infrastructure to more inclusive public services. This has shifted perceptions: clean energy is no longer an external policy, but a shared local asset.

The impact is also social and political. High levels of public support, with over 90% of teachers and around 85% of students and parents in participating communities supporting the shift to renewable energy, demonstrate that local ownership strengthens legitimacy and trust in the transition.

Building on this foundation, the Green Mayors Alliance is scaling this impact from individual projects to a regional system. The Alliance transforms local experience into collective capacity, enabling municipalities to move from isolated initiatives to coordinated investment pipelines.