Role of varying information on emission reductions in municipal decision-making

Abstract

Municipalities play a crucial role in reaching global climate targets, and municipality-owned buildings are an emission source that they can directly address. The municipality investment decision-making process could involve information on the attainable emission reductions in addition to the economic feasibility of the investments. In this study, we assess what is the importance of the information about attainable emission reductions and how the information and its variation would affect the initiatives of energy efficiency investments in municipality-owned buildings in two municipalities in Finland. We use innovative mixed method research approach to cover the dilemma of how different emission reduction calculation methods and their results affect municipal planning and decision-making. We first selected twelve buildings in the case municipalities and calculated their emission reductions attainable with energy efficiency investments in the operational phase by four different methods: two building specific and market-based methods, namely IPCC and LCA, and two municipality level location-based methods, CO₂-report and ALas. We then interviewed the case municipalities’ property managers and planners and used the emission reduction calculation results as stimulus material during the interviews. The results showed that emission reductions might not be the primary driver for investments in energy efficiency. Nevertheless, they were seen as a by-product of a good decision-making process on energy efficiency investment. Furthermore, the property managers and planners were skeptical about how the municipal decision-makers would understand and use the varying results of different emission reduction calculation methods.