Do Climate Targets Matter? The Accountability of Target-setting in Urban Climate and Energy Policy

Climate-related targets abound, but are they important drivers of policy action? Given the apparent gap between ambitious targets and concrete actions to reach them, climate-related targets can easily be seen as representative of a crisis of accountability. At the same time, this chapter argues, there are practices of legitimation at work that can help overcome this crisis, and translate abstract and arbitrary targets into concrete policy implementation. Norway’s Zero Growth Objective in transport policy represents a case of this. From its first formulation as a target around 2006 and until 2019, it has materialised as a “hard” target shaping funding streams and concrete policy interventions, and most likely, emission levels. Under certain conditions, abstract targets play important roles in legitimating transition policy.