Accounting for over 70% of global CO2 emissions, cities are major contributors to climate change. Acknowledging this, urban climate change adaptation and mitigation plans are increasingly developed to make progress toward enhancing climate resilience. While there is consensus that focusing on both adaptation and mitigation is necessary for addressing climate change impacts, better understanding of their interactions is needed to efficiently maximize their potentials. This paper, first, provides a bibliographic analysis to map existing knowledge regarding adaptation-mitigation interactions.

This study compares and contrasts Australian and global best practices in policy and regulation for the energy and carbon performance of the built environment. It examines the drivers and opportunities for, and barriers to, the adoption of best practices in Australia. Finally, and as a stimulus to debate, it proposes a potential set of optimal measures, at national, state/territory and local levels, along with an indicative pathway for their implementation.

A Global Survey of Building Energy Efficiency Policies in Cities is a resource for city officials around the world as they design new policies for building energy efficiency, or review existing ones. The research should help close the evidence gap regarding city-level activity in building energy efficiency. As such, it is designed to be accessible to those working in the field in general, including researchers.