The Engagement of Small European Municipalities in Achieving the Climate Neutrality

Over the past two decades, European municipalities have been including in their local strategies energy and climate consideration, thereby developing actions plans with a growing focus on both mitigation and adaptation to climate change. This paradigmatic change has been supported by the EU policy framework on energy, climate and environment, currently enshrined in the European Green Deal, and by the new Leipzig Charter on sustainable cities, which have set the “green” transition as a reference for implementing interventions aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In the challenge of climate change adaptation and mitigation, major European cities have behaved as frontrunner to meet ambitious climate targets by designing and implementing a well-developed set of experiences and good practices. However, also small municipalities with a population of less than 10000 inhabitants have been playing a key role in the climate transition. This is evident from the high participation of small municipalities in the Covenant of Mayors initiative in Europe (CoM), covering the 63% of the whole CoM signatories. The CoM initiative is supporting local authorities in taking local action against climate change through a bottom-up voluntary approach. CoM signatories commit to develop a Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) to meet their energy and climate targets. By analyzing the SECAPs of a sample of small municipalities with most ambitious 2030 targets in the EU, this paper aims to explore how these signatories intend to achieve their objectives thereby building upon their actions to identify urban planning trends and options.