Local climate change mitigation actions in the European Union: Their relation with public attitudes and GHG emission reductions

The changing climate requires the implementation of stringent policies that curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Studies on the effectiveness of national climate policies find small but significant effects on GHG emission reductions if countries implement them. They explain differences across countries, overlooking varying emission trends within countries and between sub-national regions, which are in parts shaped by climate change mitigation actions taken by local authorities. Opinion studies show that a public favoring environmental protection and exhibiting climate change concern nudges decision-makers to pass climate bills. What has received less attention is how economic optimism about the transition to the low-carbon economy and perceptions about government responsibility to tackle climate change influence climate policy provision. We investigate to what extent local mitigation actions explain reductions in regional GHG emissions overall and in the most targeted sectors buildings and transport in the European Union. We elaborate on the efficacy of certain types of actions, such as subsidies, public direct investment and regulations and contrast them with cheaper interventions such as citizen awareness raising. The second part examines public attitudes related to climate change such as climate change concern, green transition optimism and perceived responsibility of local authorities and if they are responsible for variation in the regional stock of local climate change mitigation actions. We analyze 212 NUTS-2 regions in Europe over 10 years (N=2120), based on GHG emission data from EDGAR, urban level mitigation actions reported to the Covenant of Mayors transnational network and Eurobarometer data about climate change attitudes of Europeans. This study is the first to draw a comprehensive picture of NUTS-2 regional climate change mitigation profiles shaped by actions and policies on various government levels, including national, regional and local interventions. Identifying their impact on GHG emission levels and growth rates in the European Union overall and sector-specifically as well as by type of action draws a nuanced picture of local mitigation action effectiveness. Moreover, the paper elicits the effect of novel types of climate change attitudes on local-level climate action, focusing on climate change concern, economic optimism about the green transition and perceived responsibility of local authorities to tackle climate change. The empirical results show that if the public demands climate change mitigation, local authorities respond accordingly and increase the stock of mitigation actions. The effectiveness for emission reductions of these ambitions is limited and constraint to the buildings sector. More effective policies, such as subsidies and mandates, should replace the large and increasing share of relatively ineffective and cheap measures for awareness raising in urban climate strategies. Overall, local representatives face a trade-off when it comes to designing stringent climate action plans: The demand for action needs to be addressed in order to be re-elected, but stringent actions can seem economically costly, which results in an oversupply of cheap but ineffective mitigation actions.