Cities and climate change actions : Comparison between five european cities

Abstract: During the last few years cities are taking the lead against climate change. Theyare aware of the big contribution they can make to mitigate the climate change, so theyare working actively in this field. This thesis’ aim is to study what cities are doing andthe chance they have to be successful. The cities selected for this thesis were Madrid,Barcelona, London, Manchester an Dublin. The method followed to active the aim wasto read all the information available from the selected cities’ Councils about themeasures they are carrying out. Then, transform that information to a way that all thecities’ information can be compared. As a result, it can be seen that there are fewdifferences in their lines of action,excluding some punctual facts. All the cities areworking actively to reduce transport sector’s emissions, to improve the energy use athomes and to increase the importance of the renewable energies. Spanish cities’emissions reduction targets are still not ambitious enough, while London’s are the mostambitious among the studied cities. As a conclusion, it can be said that cities shouldwork together to face the challenge of climate change, because there’s still much to do,targets have to be more ambitious and measures stricter.