Power and local governments in the energy transition

Topic

Cities around the world are gearing up to play a major role in climate change mitigation. And municipalities play an important role in the Dutch energy transition. However, concrete results, like significant emissions reductions, and information on key performance, as expected from cities committed to mitigating climate change, are often conspicuously absent. However, it is unclear whether they have enough governing capacity to fulfil this role and thus can formulate and implement new policies successfully.

A study was performed by PBL (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) assessing how the performance of local policy on energy transition can be improved by improving governing capacity. To do so, a survey was conducted, operationalising governing capacity, and assessing relationships between governing capacity and policy output. The results of the study showed that governing capacity, its preconditions and energy transition policy output differ largely between Dutch municipalities.