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Abstract: Tackling climate change is a growing concern of our society. Although action is needed at all levels of governance, local authorities play a key role in climate action. The creation of sustainable energy and climate action plans at the local level are recent trends that show increasing local commitment. During the last decade, several municipalities have started to develop plans, but surprisingly little systematic technical guidance has been provided to them. As part of an effort to develop tools to assist energy planning at the local level, this study addresses the role of indicators in energy planning. This paper aims to propose a framework of local energy sustainability indicators to be used both as an assessment and as an action-planning tool. A literature review of existing sets of sustainability indicators and the testing of the selected indicators with pilot municipalities has led to a framework composed by 18 indicators. The indicators proposed were developed by having into consideration, besides relevance, their potential use as decision criteria for identifying the most effective actions for local energy planning. The paper also investigates the presence of the proposed indicators in existing local sustainability assessment initiatives and energy and climate action plans as well as the purpose for which they were being used in the plans. The analysis of 10 local energy and climate action plans has revealed that local authorities are using indicators mostly for diagnosis purposes, paying less attention to monitoring. Using indicators as decision criteria to choose the actions to be included in the action plan is not yet a common practice. It was also found that only a small number of the indicators proposed in this paper were already considered in the action plans analysed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Climate change mitigation is considered as a high priority internationally and is placed in the top of the agenda for most politicians and decision makers. The key challenge is that low-carbon sustainable technologies need to be adopted both by developed as well as developing countries, in an effort to avoid past unsustainable practices and being locked into old, less sustainable technologies. Technology transfer (TT), as an important feature of both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol can play a key role. TT can allow countries to move quickly to environmentally sound and sustainable practices, institutions and technologies. Indeed, the transfer or innovation process must be fast enough, to reduce global vulnerability to climate change. The aim of this paper is to analyse the TT challenges and emerging opportunities under the new climate regime, in terms of the process of innovation into an existing energy system, the related barriers and the supporting diffusion mechanisms. Good practices for renewable energy are also presented and discussed by both the developed and the developing countries in this respect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]