A comparative analysis of urban energy governance in four European cities

Cities are at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change and in this paper, we examine the influence of urban energy governance on these policy goals. An innovative framework for quantifying the combined governance of cities and energy systems is presented before focusing on a detailed study of London, Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen. By applying an optimization model to assess the lowest cost technology pathways to achieve emission reduction targets, the links between the governance of urban energy systems and the cost of achieving carbon targets are shown. Additionally a novel metric of scenario similarity is introduced in order to evaluate the difficulty of hypothesized energy system transitions. The results indicate that these tools can be valuable in identifying similar cities for the sharing of best practice, for performing comparative evaluations of energy transitions, and for reinforcing the need to complement quantitative assessments with a more holistic appreciation of local context.