Breaking Up Silos – Can a mission approach for climate neutral cities accelerate energy transitions?

The world needs to break out from business as usual to speed up energy transitions. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of breaking up silos between institutions to accelerate transitions. This project examines how an innovative governance mechanism - the mission approach - can accelerate energy transitions, particularly in cities. For this purpose, we study two cities that are part of the European Cities Mission: Stockholm and Amsterdam. The project includes three work packages that focus on the design, practices and impacts of the mission approach. In these work packages we explore three cross-cutting themes: architecture, agency and allocation. This will offer crucial insights for understanding and evaluating structures, actors, and justice concerns in the mission approach. The project thereby contributes to understanding how the mission approach can break up silos and provide approaches and tools to accelerate sustainable energy transitions towards net zero emissions.