Challenges Faced When Addressing the Role of Cities Towards a Below Two Degrees World

In order to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to limit average global temperature rise to well under 2 °C, concerted action will be needed in cities to manage energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, what can be done at city level to move towards such a global ambitious target? The project InSMART (Integrative Smart City Planning) brought together four EU cities: Evora (Portugal), Cesena (Italy), Nottingham (UK) and Trikala (Greece), and scientific organizations in these countries in order to try and provide some answers to this question. A methodology was established for enhancing sustainable energy planning for future city needs through an integrative and multidisciplinary approach, including City Energy System Models (ESM), development of different scenarios with a participatory workshop approach, and a multi-criteria assessment for the final ranking of measures and the development of a Sustainable Energy Action Plan. It is important not to overestimate the contribution and the area of influence of city-agents to the global GHG target; but it is undoubted that municipalities are extremely well positioned for actions related to households, and their consumption in buildings and transport, for bridging locally the gap between what is perceived/known and what would be economically and technically feasible and for urban planning with a focus on significant benefits for GHG emissions reduction.