Identifying cross-sectoral issues of climate change adaptation policies on a local scale: Evidence from the Water-Energy-Climate Nexus in the Grenoble metropolitan area

The city of Grenoble has just been awarded the title of European Green Capital 2022, a label recognizing cities' commitment to climate change. The jury praised the city's energy policies, such as the metropolitan heating network, the second largest in France after Paris. In terms of water supply, the city of Grenoble has significant resources (water production capacity is three times greater than demand), of very good quality (the water is not treated before distribution to inhabitants), and secure (one of the largest protection areas in Europe). Nevertheless, due to the mountainous topography of the urban area, some neighbourhoods remain fed by local springs which are particularly vulnerable to extreme events. With regard to flood management policies, the Grenoble metropolitan area has also committed to an ambitious investment program to protect the Grenoble plain from flooding by the Isère and Drac rivers. Here again, the ambition of the policies carried out on the Drac and Isère rivers contrasts with the absence of flood management policies for the torrential tributaries. The hypothesis that we develop is that despite the ambition of local policies, they remain insufficiently cross-sectoral and multi-level, and instead highlight a siloed approach which is proving insufficient to meet the challenges posed by climate change. Two case studies that combine water supply, flooding and energy issues at the scale of the Grenoble urban area will be analyzed to test this hypothesis. To support our demonstration we will mobilise the concept of Water-Energy-Climate Nexus (Allouche et al., 2014; Leck et al., 2015; Artioli et al., 2017) as a methodological input that allow us to identify the tensions in terms of nexus in our case studies. We then seek to characterise the different choices - technical, managerial and societal - behind water and energy policies, and their interactions, showing that they play a major role in urban sustainability (Bruzonne et De Gouvello, 2019).