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Within the context of an energy transition towards achieving a renewable low-impact energy consumption system, this study analyses how bottom-up initiatives can contribute to state driven top-down efforts to achieve the sustainability related goals of (1) reducing total primary energy consumption; (2) reducing residential electricity and heat consumption; and (3) increasing generated renewable energy and even attaining self-sufficiency. After identifying the three most cited German bottom-up energy transition cases, the initiatives have been qualitatively and quantitatively analysed. The case study methodology has been used and each initiative has been examined in order to assess and compare these with the German national panorama. The novel results of the analysis demonstrate the remarkable effects of communal living, cooperative investment and participatory processes on the creation of a new sustainable energy system. The study supports the claim that bottom-up initiatives could also contribute to energy sustainability goals together within the state driven plans. Furthermore, the research proves that the analysed bottom-up transitions are not only environmentally and socially beneficial but they can also be economically feasible, at least in a small scale, such as the current German national top-down energy policy panorama.

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The IPCC 1.5°C report argues for a 50% cut of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Dangerous gaps lie between what is required to reach the 1.5°C objective, what governments have pledged and what is happening in reality. Here, we develop 'climate policy gap' graphics for Portugal, Spain and Morocco to help reveal this divide and quantify the underreaction between diagnosis and action, through layers of political intended and unintended miscommunication, insufficient action and the power of the fossil fuels industries. The climate policy gaps for the three nations reveal overshoots on even the most ambitious levels of emissions reductions pledged when compared with trajectories compatible with 1.5°C or even 2°C limits. This research suggests that there is a built-in feature of under-reaction in climate policy, which staves off any emission pathways compatible with stopping a temperature rise above 1.5°C by 2100. It shows that the climate policy gap is a political and methodological tool that reveals systemic shortcomings of government climate action. Its visibility identifies benchmarks and sectors that should be activated to close these gaps in response to the growing popular demands for climate justice.

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