Co-benefits rarely enter quantitative decision-support frameworks, often because the methodologies for their integration are lacking or not known. This review fills in this gap by providing comprehensive methodological guidance on the quantification of co-impacts and their integration into climate-related decision making based on the literature. The article first clarifies the confusion in the literature about related terms and makes a proposal for a more consistent terminological framework, then emphasizes the importance of working in a multiple-objective–multiple-impact framework.

Cities are crucial sites for achieving socio-technical transitions in technology and infrastructure systems. Raising building energy efficiency (BEE) through new construction or retrofitting holds particular relevance to sustainability transitions since this requires diffusion of new technologies and energy management practices. In pursuit of this, city policymakers around the world are increasingly utilising mixes of multiple policy instruments.