Finzel, Lydia

Utilities, such as energy and water providers, play a crucial role in shaping urban climate action in terms of mitigation or adaptation, yet their contributions are often understudied. This paper addresses the question: Are cities with strong city-utility relationships better at implementing climate action? If so, what types of relationships are most relevant? Our analysis is motivated by the growing recognition that cities are pivotal actors in addressing climate change, with utilities serving as key partners e.g. in the energy transition or to adapt water systems to climate impacts. Local governments and utilities have always been closely interrelated in many ways, e.g. through ownership or privatization, collective action in social programs, regulation or cronyism. Such relations might also play out strongly for climate -related decisions, making partnerships or conflicts among them central to urban climate governance.

We conduct a mapping exercise to explore mechanisms through which city-utility relationships influence climate action. This will include empirically described mechanisms of collective action, such as public ownership and regulation, as well as less-explored factors like familial ties and the “green revolving door” phenomenon. By contextualizing our findings through existing literature and expanding them with an AI-assisted systematic literature review, we provide a comprehensive overview of how these relationships impact urban climate governance. Our output is a catalogue of mechanisms for key pathways through which city-utility partnerships enhance or hinder climate action, offering value to researchers and practitioners interested in municipal governance and utilities. The catalogue provides a basis for planning or as device for situating further empirical studies. We hypothesize the catalogue will highlight the importance of collaboration between utilities and local governments for the successful implementation of urban climate plans, emphasizing the need for an integrated approach to climate governance.

As cities face increasing climate risks, the urgency to implement effective adaptation measures has never been greater. Despite cities' central role in climate adaptation, there is limited understanding of whether the measures outlined in their adaptation plans adequately address the risks they face. This study analyzes 137 climate adaptation plans from European cities to identify the climate risks and measures included, using structural topic modeling (STM). By examining the co-occurrence of risks and measures, we aim to uncover potential mismatches between the risks that cities identify and the measures they propose to mitigate them. We expect our analysis to reveal notable trends in adaptation planning across different city sizes, regions, and governance structures, highlighting disparities in how cities prioritize risks and implement adaptation actions. We hypothesize that while some cities align their measures with specific climate risks, others focus on more general adaptation efforts, potentially overlooking key vulnerabilities. This research contributes to the growing field of computational text analysis in climate adaptation scholarship, offering insights into the complex dynamics of local climate governance and the factors influencing adaptation planning. We anticipate that addressing these misalignments could enhance the effectiveness of urban climate adaptation strategies and support more resilient urban futures.