Monitoring localised decarbonisation goals: lessons learnt from Madrid’s Roadmap to 2050

Over the past few years, Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) have become a common tool for local and regional governments (LRGs) to monitor local achievements and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many LRGs rely on policy analysis and quantitative data to assess initiatives and regulations in several SDG-related policy fields. While working on its own VLR, the City of Madrid published in March 2021 its Roadmap to Climate Neutrality by 2050. The Roadmap was a valuable policy document because it gave insight on a fully local long-term policy strategy on a sensitive policy issue such as decarbonisation and climate change. This report studies the process that led to the Roadmap, highlighting the links between the document and Madrid's longstanding tradition of regulation on greenhouse gas emissions, climate change mitigation, and other decarbonisation measures. It also studies how the Roadmap - a planning document on a specific sustainability issue - compares to existing VLRs from Europe and elsewhere in terms of selected indicators, collected data, and policy lines of action. This information can help define a 'localised' concept of climate neutrality and assess whether a genuinely local approach to decarbonisation currently exists, and how this fits with the targets identified by the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda at the global level.