Access to funding for climate action. Climate action must be appropriately funded. National financial support for local initiatives is often limited, and cities generally cannot acquire money in the same ways as national governments. This gap is now being filled by other finance opportunities for cities, including public funding mechanisms, national and regional development banks, and business finance. However, local government staff may lack the skills to acquire and manage funds from such sources, and in committing to them, they may make themselves subject to particular requirements or political agendas. - Vertical co-ordination. Being embedded in multi-level networks that ensure vertical coordination between a city government, the national government and any other regional or supranational governance levels, is considered key in creating a supportive context for urban governance for climate action. Alternatively, an organisation may take up the role of vertical coordinator: for instance, a dedicated national government body may be installed to ‘orchestrate’ climate actions across and between different levels. - Horizontal co-ordination. Coordination across different departments, agencies and organisations within a city is key to ensuring effective and coherent action. Approaches to achieving this include a central coordination of urban climate governance from the mayor's office, or dedicated climate change agencies or working groups that bring together civil servants from different sectors. Such approaches may help traditionally organised departments to break out of siloes and achieve synergies across technological and societal transitions at city level. - Participation in capacity-building and learning networks. Participation in these networks can positively influence climate governance at the city level. Information to help successfully advance climate action based on experience may be shared through these networks, and by combining resources, these networks are capable of carrying out more rigorous climate governance experiments than individual cities. However, some cities may seek to freeride on the reputation of key networks, but not necessarily to commit themselves to their ambitions.
Access to funding for climate action. Capacity German local authorities are responsible for providing adequate public transport, with the federal government making financial resources available to enable them to fulfil this task. The financial support is regulated in the ‘Gemeindeverkehrsfinanzierungsgesetzes’ (GVFG), the communal transport financing regulation. As part of the German climate protection plan, the regulation has been updated to increase the financial means available to local authorities, doubling the annual amount in 2020 by 2025. In addition, there are a variety of funds and grants available at federal level that cities can apply for to fund or partially fund projects to support low carbon transport and mobility. Key examples are as follows. The Federal Government's Climate Protection Program 2030 is intended to provide additional funds of €900 million euros for cycling infrastructure by 2023. This fund bundles a couple of funding measures, targeted at improving cycling infrastructure, including in cities but also to connect cities and rural areas (Bundesministerium für Verkehr und Digitale Infrastruktur, 2020a). The ‘Sofort Programm Saubere Xxxx’ (Immediate Programme for Clean Air) is a fund intended to financially support cities to reduce air pollution in inner cities, which has become an increasing problem in German cities, which regularly surpass EU mandated air quality limits. The programme makes funding available for cities to implement measures for the electrification of urban transport and the establishment of charging infrastructure, measures for the digitisation of transport systems and measures for retrofitting diesel buses in local public transport with exhaust gas treatment systems. Even though this programme is targeted at clean air, it also has an impact on CO2 emissions. (Bundesministerium für Verkehr und Digitale Infrastruktur, 2020b). The Municipal climate protection ‘model projects’ is a line of funding initiated by the German Ministry for the Environment and is intended for local governments implementing ‘model projects’ in municipal climate protection. Funded projects are intended to make a significant contribution to the gradual achievement of greenhouse gas neutrality in municipalities and encourage the imitation and implementation of further climate protection projects (Projektträger Jülich, 2020). To implement the NRVP (see Section 4.1), the German Government has also made available
