Motivating local home-owners to energy retrofitting as examples on Urban Climate Governance in Danish Municipalities

I the recent years, Danish municipalities have increasingly taken up initiatives to improve energy efficiency in private buildings. The paper will present a study on how Danish municipalities in practice have carried out such efforts on convincing private home-owners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. The study includes a survey amongst 22 Danish municipalities on their initiatives, and case studies of five municipalities.
In a theoretical perspective, the municipal initiatives to promote energy retrofitting can be seen as an example on ’Urban Climate governance’ (Kern & Alber, 2009; Bulkeley, 2009) that includes different governmental approaches for the local authorities. The challenge of local sustainability is that it is complex and defined on different levels (local, municipal, regional, national, and international), that requires a ’multilevel governance’–approach to succeed (Bulkeley & Betsill, 2005). Moreover, the municipalities ‘traditional’ regulatory tools are insufficient when it comes to change of private property, therefore other types of governance are needed.
From the theoretical perspective the paper will discuss the different types of governance being used in practice, including the types of governance and collaborations, as well as the challenges and shortcomings of the selected approaches. Also, it will discuss the motivations for the local actors to pursue this type of initiatives, in relation to the results achieved.