Climate Budget: A Tool for Transition in Norwegian Municipalities?

The climate budget has been presented as a management tool to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and other established climate goals, such as increasing the proportion of walking and cycling. How do Norwegian municipalities use the climate budget as a tool for transitioning to a low-emission society?

Aerial picture of the city center of Tromsø

Tromsø is one of the cities that has developed a climate budget and which will be studied in this project. Photo: Yves Scheuber from Unsplash

Background

Since 2017, several municipalities have chosen to implement climate budgets as part of their climate initiatives and as a concrete tool to achieve emission targets set by the municipality. Despite the increasing use of climate budgets at all levels of governance in Norway, there is thin knowledge about how it is implemented and executed.

About the Project

The aim of this research project is to study how Norwegian municipalities implement and work with climate budgets as tools for climate transition. It aims to contribute knowledge about how climate budgets function as management tools and how they are adapted and translated to the municipality's local context.

To investigate this, an initial document study will be conducted on the climate budgets of the following eight municipalities: Arendal, Fredrikstad, Oslo, Bodø, Tromsø, Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger. This study will examine the extent to which these climate budgets resemble management tools. Furthermore, studies will be conducted in a selection of four to five municipalities, with data collection through interviews, observations, and documents. Here, we will examine how the climate budget is translated to function in the local context and investigate how it influences, or is influenced by, the municipality's work related to climate transition.

This is a doctoral research project conducted by Julie Høie Nygård and supervised by Associate Professor Elin Anita Nilsen and Senior Researcher Hege Westskog. It constitutes part of the research project "Implementation of Climate Budget - Does it contribute to municipalities' transition to a low-emission society?"

Duration

2022-2025

Participants

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Published May 27, 2024 5:15 PM - Last modified May 27, 2024 5:17 PM