Energy and Climate Change Polices in Europe: Overview and Selected Examples from a Spatial Planning Perspective

The challenges imposed by the changing climate and the energy-driven developments are very complex and need to be addressed from the global to the local scale. In the last decades, this issue has attracted the attention of policy makers at all levels of government, attempting to adopt an integrated and adaptive energy and climate strategy. This paper reviews and analyzes the main efforts that have been made in Europe to secure a transition toward a low-carbon and energy—efficiency society from a spatial planning perspective. To this aim, the paper presents an in-depth analysis of selected climate and energy policy documents elaborated at three different levels of governance: the European Union, the national and the local level. At the European level, our analysis shows that very limited attention has given to spatial planning as a strategy to reduce or ameliorate the impacts of the changing climate. At the national level, while mitigation policies are more inclined towards techno-centric solutions, adaptation policies partly recognize the anticipatory role of spatial planning to play in promoting robust adaptation measures. At the local level, where most of the causes and the effects of the changing climate are manifested, technological options are often well integrated with spatial planning. However, even at the local scale, energy and climate policies focus mainly on individual sectors or urban functions rather than systemic changes.