Evaluating Integration of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Policy in Swedish Structure Plans: The Performance Approach

Abstract

Integration of national climate change and energy efficiency goals into conventional local structure planning requires a shift in focus from conventional concerns about urban growth to local sustainable development in which climate change and energy efficiency are key components. Local government responses in integrating these goals show structural limitations, despite widespread awareness of the need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt more climate-smart and energy-efficient policies. This paper assesses the integration of national climate change and energy efficiency goals in Swedish local structure plans and presents an in-depth study of one plan, that of Värmdö municipality in Sweden. The evaluation comprised plan content analysis using a few selected criteria for three concepts, namely, ‘visions’, ‘comprehensive strategies’ and ‘measures’, and use of the Dutch performance approach to examine implementation aspects of climate change and energy efficiency strategies in the plans.

Are Local Authorities Building Their Capacity to Plan for Reduced Climate Impact? A Longitudinal Analysis of Swedish Comprehensive Plans

“…Nonetheless, the results also show that the practice is uncommon in Stockholm County. The document analysis conducted by Dovlén and Khakee [24] suggests that the situation is similar elsewhere in Sweden.…”

“…The main research design consists of a longitudinal content analysis of municipal comprehensive plans. There has been a growing body of literature analysing and evaluating the content and quality of both climate action plans (e.g., [43][44][45][46][47][48]) and, to a lesser extent, land use plans in terms of addressing climate change (e.g., [24,49]). Most of these, however, use a cross-sectional approach, which provides a snapshot of the current state of planning.…”

“…However, the success of this climate objective will depend heavily on the actions of Swedish municipalities [22] and the support provided by the regional authorities [23]. A key aspect of the municipalities' possibilities to contribute to decarbonisation lies in how they conduct their spatial planning [24]. One statutory spatial plan where climate change mitigation aspects could be integrated, covered by SEA requirements, is the Comprehensive Plan (CP), required to be adopted by all of Sweden's 290 municipalities [25].…”

Performance of local level planning policies for reducing greenhouse gases: insight from new buildings in Scotland

“…Other studies show that local spatial planning had weakly responded to advancing the measures for reducing GHGs (Stern, 2006; Sullivan, 2007). Preston et al (2011) in the USA and Dovlen and Khakee (2017) in Sweden concluded that local plans containing GHG policies were themselves relatively underdeveloped and often produced poor results (Victor et al , 2017; Steffen et al , 2018). This pinpoints the need for further insight on how the performance of the policies can be understood and enhanced if countries are to achieve their GHG reduction targets for 2030 and beyond.…”