Urban CO2 mitigation strategies under the Covenant of Mayors: an assessment of 124 European cities

In 2008, the European Commission (EC) launched the Covenant of Mayors (CoM), a voluntary agreement under which local governments commit to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 20% within 2020, in order to reinforce local authorities in designing strategies to mitigate climate change in coherence with the European Union’s climate policy. The CoM may be defined as a coordinated collection of experiments based on common rules established by the EC. Cities signing the CoM commit to follow guidelines and standardized methodologies in setting CO2 emission reduction targets and in designing and implementing policies and measures to reach them, through the definition of key tools such as the Baseline Emission Inventory (BEI) and the Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP). The present study analyses the emission reduction strategies of a sample of 124 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, signatories of the CoM, which delivered a SEAP by February 2014. More than 5500 actions planned by the sample cities were analysed and categorized. The most relevant actions in terms of recurrence and mitigation impact were assessed. Finally a set of variables was tested through a regression so as to determine their influence on emission reductions strategies.