Climate Emission and Energy Use Planning at the Local Level: Top-down Directives and Bottom-up Responses, 2014

The point of departure for this project was a stipulation contained in the revised Planning and Building Act (PBL) of 2009 requiring municipal authorities to develop climate gas emission and energy use plans as part of their on-going planning processes. Virtually all municipalities now have such plans, but there is little cumulative knowledge about the processes by which these plans were prepared, the content of the plans, and how these plans have been followed up since their adoption. This project was designed to fill this knowledge gap, to provide a comprehensive overview of how the intentions found in the revised Plan and Building Law been pursued in municipal planning and implementation activities, and the status of climate gas emission and energy use policies at the local level. A combination of document studies, a national survey and in-depth case studies were conducted. Through collaboration with Swedish researchers the project also incorporated a comparative perspective. Particular attention was paid to issues of involvement and coordination among different actors within each municipality as well as across municipal boundaries both horizontally and vertically, and the significance of the legal framework for planning and implementation activities within this domain. In the last phase of the project emphasis was given to identify and communicate the policy implications of the research results. This was done by means of user dialogues with policy makers who sought to achieve reduction in climate emissions and effective energy use by means of realistic, locally anchored policy processes. Both qualitative interviews and a survey were conducted. This data set only contains data from the national survey which was answered by the administrative staff of 293 municipalities.

Data is freely available for download.