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This paper analyses how 10 localities in the USA and England, recognised as leaders in clean energy and climate action, have used collaborative approaches to develop local climate change plans and energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy initiatives. It examines these planning and policy-making processes in the context of Margerum's [2008. A typology of collaboration efforts in environmental management.Environmental Management, 41 (4), 487–500] typology of “action”, “organizational”, and “policy-level” collaborations, as well as Gray's [1989.Collaborating: finding common ground for multiparty problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass] classification of collaboration in the “problem-setting”, “direction-setting”, and “implementation” phases. We conducted interviews with local elected officials, municipal staff, energy professionals, and citizen volunteers in each community, supplemented with an analysis of their adopted energy, climate change, and land-use plans. We find that despite the different government structures and political contexts between the two countries, there was a surprising amount of commonality in how the case study localities used collaborative planning to develop local climate plans and clean energy initiatives. These processes were most often initiated by local elected officials and/or high-level staff members, and then carried out in collaboration with local third-sector organisations and other community stakeholders. In the USA, collaboration was strongest at the policy level and in the direction-setting phase, with the distinguishing feature that citizen advisory boards or stakeholder working groups often took a more active role in shaping local plans and policies. The English localities had some of those same types of collaborations, but were more likely to also employ action collaboration, in the implementation phase, in which third-sector organisations coordinated with the locality to directly provide clean energy services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilevel governance poses several challenges for the politics of climate change. On the one hand, the unequal distribution of power and interests can serve as a barrier to implementing coherent policy at a federal level. On the other, these features also enable policy leadership among sub-federal units. In the context of wide variation in climate policy at both national and sub-federal levels in Canada and in the United States, this paper utilizes an original data set to examine public attitudes and perceptions toward climate science and climate change policy in two federal systems. Drawing on national and provincial/state level data from telephone surveys administered in the United States and in Canada, the paper provides insight into where the public stands on the climate change issue in two of the most carbon-intensive federal systems in the world. The paper includes the first directly comparable public opinion data on how Canadians and Americans form their opinions regarding climate matters and provides insight into the preferences of these two populations regarding climate policies at both the national and sub-federal levels. Key findings are examined in the context of growing policy experiments at the sub-federal level in both countries and limited national level progress in the adoption of climate change legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]