How effective and ambitious are city climate mitigation targets? A review of the Portuguese local energy action plans

An estimated 55% of the world’s population currently lives in urban settlements, and this share will increase to 60% in 2030 according to United Nations projections. Cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and are... [ view full abstract ]

An estimated 55% of the world’s population currently lives in urban settlements, and this share will increase to 60% in 2030 according to United Nations projections. Cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and are responsible for more than 60% of global CO₂ emissions. Following governments commitments to respond to the threat of climate change, the role of cities is gaining prominence worldwide. Several city-led initiatives, such as the EU Covenant of Mayors Pact (CoM), the UN Compact of Mayors, or the C40 Cities Climate leadership group, commit to lead their partner cities towards sustainable development achievements, low carbon future design and improved quality of life of their citizens. But how effective and ambitious are in fact cities’ voluntary GHG mitigation commitments? In this paper we analysed all the available Portuguese local Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAP) to assess their relevance for national mitigation and renewable energy sources objectives. We reviewed 108 SEAPs implemented until June 2017 regarding their territorial and population coverage, mitigation and renewable energy targets and the necessary investment. Several indicators were developed allowing comparison of plans. The analysed SEAP cover 58% of the Portuguese population, including two of the larges cities in the country, but only correspond to 32% of the country’s territory. We conclude that the defined 2020 city mitigation targets in the studied SEAP foresee a reduction of CO₂e emissions of each municipality between 20% and 58% compared to the value of the respective reference years. In total terms, the cities’ 2020 GHG emission mitigation ambitions are of circa 6.0 MtCO₂e, which corresponds to 21% of the total national GHG emission reduction target for 2020 of 28 MtCO₂e according to the National Program for Climate Change 2020/2030 (PNAC). The most representative economic sectors in terms of city’s mitigation effort are transport (40% of the total 6.0 MtCO₂e SEAP mitigation effort in 2020), the residential sector (28%) and services sectors (11%). The investment needs reported by the cities as necessary for the implementation of the various mitigation measures by 2020 totals € 7 000 million. On average, 67% of the total funding required will be dependent on external funding to the City Councils. It was concluded that the mitigation measures in the SEAP are very similar across cities and some are rather generic in their description (e.g. "sustainable water management", "improved transport network", "urban rehabilitation and improved accessibility"). The repetition of similar measures in the plans might indicate that the specific municipalities’ context is not being considered enough. Because of the vagueness of some measures, their repetition, and since most of the necessary investment is from outside the City budget control, the effectiveness of the plans may be hampered, resulting in a more modest GHG reduction than ambitioned. We conclude that more capacity building of the plan developers is necessary, as well as some articulation with national mitigation efforts to increase effectiveness of the city plans. 

Keywords: Climate change, GHG mitigation, local climate plans, Covenant of Mayors, SEAP, cities