Su m m ary. The role of the city in environ m ental m anagem ent is in creasin gly com ing to the fore. A cen tral elem en t in creatin g urban environ m ental sustain ability is the adop tion of approp riate en ergy p olicies, since m ost environ m ental extern alities in cities are directly or indirectly related to energy u se. The cu rren t p ractice d em onstrates an overw helm ing variety of initiative s and policies, so th at the actu al su ccess of such strategi es in a cross-sect ional com parative persp ective is hard to evalu ate. In this con text, this paper offers an application of m eta-an alysis, as this approach is an interestin g an alytical con trib ution tow ard s a better understan ding of th e critical success factors of urb an en ergy policies. The paper starts with a gen eral overview of th e issu e of urban sustain ab ility and sets out the im p ortan ce of energy p olicies at th e urban level. It con tin ues by offerin g a m ethodological fram ew ork for the assessm ent of critical factors related to the perform an ce of sustain able energy strategi es. Using a datab ase con tain ing inform ation on exp erien ces an d exp ert exp ectation s regard ing ren ew able en ergy initiative s in 12 Europ ean cities spread over 3 cou ntries (Italy, The N eth erlan ds and G reece), w e offer a cross-E urop ean com p arative analysis of the perform an ce of urban renew able energy tech n ologies. This com parative analysis con sists of a statistic al exp lanation based on a prob it analysis of urb an su stain ability data and the application of a speci® c m eta-an alytical m ethod, called rou gh set analysis. The paper ends with a con clu ding section on p olicy lesson s. P eter Nijkam p and Gerard P epping are in the

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