This research paper aims at developing and applying a constructive weighting methodology for the elicitation of local stakeholders' preferences regarding a set of sustainability evaluation criteria during the assessment of low-carbon energy technologies. The overall methodology has been applied and tested for the sustainability evaluation of selected low-carbon energy technologies in Europe from a local stakeholders' perspective. The researchers applied a constructive weighting methodology based on different Multiple Criteria Analysis (MCA) techniques to test the consistency of stakeholders' preferences. The methodology was piloted based on a small-scale European local stakeholders' survey within the framework of Covenant CapaCITY, an Intelligent Energy Europe project that supports the development of Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs). It became evident that the local stakeholders who participated placed high priorities on aspects such as CO2eq emissions reduction, ecosystem damages reduction, and resilience to climate change during the evaluation of low-carbon energy technologies. Considering the overall energy technologies assessment, wind off-shore, solar PV, hydropower, and wind on-shore achieved the highest scores and better reflected the priorities of local stakeholders considering a large OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 10923 set of multiple sustainability criteria. The high number of criteria led to some inconsistencies of stakeholders' preferences, confirming the need for consistency checks and/or combining different methods of preference elicitation.

A major policy innovation in China, urban renewal creates an opportunity to promote sustainable inner-city development and to foster economic growth in an environmentally and culturally sound way, which demands a close investigation of its context, internal and external dynamics, and policy features. Property-led redevelopment dominated China's urban renewal since the early 1990s, as a result of the market reform and political decentralization. Recently, it has become important to meet the interests of local communities and the diverse stakeholders in the effort to preserve the urban history and cultural fabric of cities. Contextual factors in urban renewal policy and its innovation are investigated by analyzing a pioneering case in Guangzhou from a longitudinal study approach. The impact of the structural-instrumental, cultural-institutional, and environmental perspective on policy innovation with the change of contextual factors that transformed the development ideology and the managerial practice are identified to provide a new angle of studying policy innovation in the urban field.

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Abstract:The main objective of this article is to assess the priorities of local governments (LGs) in Europe regarding climate change mitigation technologies evaluation in the electricity sector and to provide important insights for energy policy design. The study applies a hybrid weighting methodology to elicit LGs' preferences in a constructive and iterative way regarding the evaluation criteria of low-carbon energy technologies. Furthermore, the study employs three data collection and preference elicitation methods, namely: survey, workshop, and webinar. The study was conducted across thirty one (31) European LGs that were categorized according to three variables: population size, geographical region and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The analysis shows that "CO2 emissions" is the most important criterion among European LGs, followed by "mortality and morbidity" and "ecosystem damages". The results illustrate the potential synergies of climate and energy policies for addressing both CO2 emissions and air pollution. It was also found, based on a correlation analysis, that LGs with higher GDP per capita tend to provide higher weights to criteria related to security of energy supply and technological innovation. The current study provides insights on the actual LGs' priorities that are important to consider during low-carbon energy technologies evaluation and energy policy design. Interestingly, the results of the European LGs' preferences clearly show that the EU climate policy objectives have reached OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2015, 8 11642 different levels of governance-and at this particular case, the local level. Furthermore, the developed methodology could be applied at different geographical regions to map other regions' LG priorities, but also at a group decision making context to elicit relevant stakeholders' preferences regarding low-carbon energy technologies and policy objectives.

A city is a place where many initiatives, people, and social and urban challenges meet. This article brings together the cumulative knowledge of eight researchers who have been studying community-based initiatives (CBIs) via case studies in various countries. In some countries, citizens were not satisfied with governmentprovided services, or services were lacking. Governments in other countries faced budget cuts to their public services, which led to a strong call for citizens to take matters into their own hands. There is a lack of research investigating the performance of CBIs and explaining their success and failure. The authors systematically analyze their recent case studies through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and try to explain under which conditions CBIs lead to high performance. One of the key findings of this analysis is that proximate conditions related to the CBIs-strong organizational capacity, democratic structure, and leadership-are important for high performance. However, these conditions are not sufficient on their own. Community-based initiatives need a conductive environment to achieve high performance; in our cases, government support and a heterogeneous community or a supportive government attitude was key.