Globally, many national governments such as those in Australia and the USA are reluctant to take meaningful action on climate change. However, cities in these and other countries are stepping up to fill this gap, and committing to meaningful emissions reductions to limit harmful warming.

Yet, the question of which city-level policies are most effective to implement remains an open research question, in part because cities need to “localize” policies implemented by their neighbours, and in part due to challenges assessing outcomes of implemented policies. This project aims to identify key actor linkages and structural barriers that shape the type of policy tools that cities are able to implement in the sustainability space, and how the policy tools used work alongside these linkages and barriers to shape project outcomes and pathways to wider impact. We will focus on cities that have set targets to achieve 100% equivalent renewable energy supply city-wide, and will evaluate what shapes policy tool choice and how tool choice in turn shapes policy outcomes.

The objective of this project is to produce recommendations for sustainably-inclined city governments, specifically being able to recommend categories of policy tools that are most likely to achieve desired outcomes in face of local linkages and barriers. This project is intended as a step toward making transfer of local learning about policy tools more systematic.