Reaching ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction goals at national and EU levels requires local action. Thus, the importance of cities for climate governance has been recognized by the EU and its Member States. However, the dependency of local climate action on national and EU energy and climate governance is often neglected. This article discusses, first, the embeddedness of local climate action in EU multilevel governance. Second, it provides an overview on the changing EU-city relations from the emergence of transnational city networks to the introduction of the EU Covenant of Mayors and the European Green Deal. Third, the article focuses on the dynamics between forerunner and laggard cities. On this basis, the article identifies the current challenges of local climate action, in particular the needs to develop appropriate governance capacities, take the spatial dimension into account and facilitate the upscaling of local experiments.
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Front Matter
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Part I: MAIN ACTORS AND INSTITUTIONS
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Part II: CORE DYNAMICS SHAPING EU POLICY
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Part III: POLICY INSTRUMENTS AND MODES OF GOVERNANCE
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Part IV: BARRIERS TO MORE AMBITIOUS ACTION IN PARTICULAR SECTORS
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Part V: NEW AND ONGOING CHALLENGES
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Part VI: CONCLUSION
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Back Matter
