Clean energy transition and local planning: Are small and rural municipalities ready to contribute to the EU Green Deal?

Urban areas account for a significant proportion of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU), while hosting 75% of its population. Therefore, they are primarily responsible for the transition towards a clean energy future and the achievement of long-term sustainability goals. However, the current scientific debate on carbon neutrality focuses primarily on larger cities (national capitals or medium-sized cities), whilst the potential contribution of small cities and rural areas to the EU's overall climate neutrality goal for 2050 remains largely untapped. This paper aims to address this gap, providing a dual-dimension evaluation framework to assess the design, implementation and outcomes of climate and energy actions in small municipalities. The first component of this framework provides an overview of municipalities based on self-assessment reports, their climate and energy plans, and an indicator-based analysis. The second component involves a context-based gap analysis conducted to highlight the drivers and barriers to implementing the clean energy transition. Additionally, a questionnaire on envisaged actions was distributed to local administrators of the sample of cities to collect information on how fill the gaps and derive context specific recommendations. Applying the proposed methodology to six pilot municipalities in six different EU countries involved in the LIFE LOCAL GoGREEN project revealed substantial barriers to the clean energy transition. This experience highlights that a lack of financial resources and a lack of motivation among decision makers remain common issues, particularly among small and rural local authorities.