Introduction to the special issue - Urban energy governance: Local actions, capacities and politics

摘要

Recent academic research, media articles and policy reports from a number of international agencies and organizations have focused on the role of cities in contributing to transforming 'unsustainable' energy systems (e.g., International Energy Agency, 2009; Bose, 2010; World Bank, 2010; Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 2010; GDF Suez, 2010; Skanska, 2010; Greenpeace, 2005; Covenant of Mayors, n.d.; Harvey, 2014; Droege, 2008; Newman et al., 2009; Troy, 2012). In October 2014, for example, six city-region networks representing more than 3000 local governments worldwide signed the Paris Declaration which places cities and regions at the forefront of global action on energy and climate issues in advance of the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21). This kind of initiative recognizes that while cities are often seen as the source of many energy issues and problems (as when they are regularly cited as being responsible for around 75% of global energy use and/ or 75% of global CO_2 emissions), they may also be part of the 'solution', offering potential, wide-ranging opportunities for contributing to shifting energy policies onto more 'sustainable' pathways. Global urban population growth, the increasing dependence of (increasingly) urbanized societies on energy, and the policy responsibility and mandate which has been allocated to, or taken up by, local and urban authorities in many countries for developing local responses to energy and climate issues mean that a specific focus on the urban scale and the potentially significant and growing roles for urban actors in energy transition processes and policies is justified, but still greatly underexplored. Understanding how and why these roles vary across the world in and between extremely distinctive urban contexts is an urgent task. For example, at a time when more than a thousand European cities are pushing for more stringent energy efficiency and renewable energy objectives than those adopted by the European Commission (Energy Cities, 2014), metropolitan governments in a range of cities across the South are struggling to position themselves and create room for policy maneuver in energy systems dominated by powerful national actors (see Jaglin and Verdeil, 2014).