A framework to take account of CO2 restrictions on municipal urban planning

Recently, more and more cities and regions are increasing their interest in sustainability, specifically on the issues related to climate change. Clear evidence is the big amount of European cities (576, in July 2009), which have already joined the Covenant of Mayors. The Covenant of Mayors is a voluntary agreement to fight against climate change at municipal level, with which the signatory cities are committed to reduce their CO2 emissions by at least 20% by 2020. To tackle climate change at local level it is necessary to research into local strategies which allow reducing global CO2 emissions. The first step of this research consists of identifying which emissions should be taken into account and how they should be measured. In the work set out below, we approach these questions from the point of view of urban planning, since we consider urban planning as one of the most important tools that municipalities have to intervene in the territory. The discussion of this paper is based on a report commissioned by the Catalan Environment and Housing Department entitled “Validació de criteris en la consideració de l'eficiència energètica del planejament”.