Integrated low-carbon strategies

Public authorities across Europe have an important role to play in the development of a sustainable and low-carbon economy, with transformations needed in every sector and area of public life. As such, multiple actors are involved in setting up strategies to direct public policy, across multiple departments and levels of governance – covering areas such as housing, building codes, land-use, transport, energy, climate change mitigation, and environmental policy.

These strategies, often developed in silos, need to be harmonised and integrated to ensure that all are pulling in the same direction and to make optimal use of limited resources. As well as cross-departmental (horizontal) co-operation, vertical co-operation between levels of government also needs to be enabled.

A number of projects and regions have already investigated the integration process and their results and guidelines can provide a number of lessons for others on how to optimally use resources, share data, engage with stakeholders, and work across boundaries to develop and achieve regional aims.