Climate change always manifests itself on the local arena and localities have to handle impacts of climate change. The policy and practice in the urban arena is central in relating global standards and knowledge, national and regional climate change scenarios/policies into particular action in specific contexts but also as a setting were new practices develop not necessarily related to top-down policies. Local governments’ responsibilities and climate change impacts intersect significantly with services for infrastructure and property services, planning and development, health and sanitation, community, building, facilities, culture, recreation facilities and water and sewerage.

Local government in the city of Örebro (a city with 140 000 inhabitants in Sweden) is establishing windmill parks with the objective that local government will become self-sufficient. Local government does this through the creation of a company were private actors can buy shares and take part in the future development of the company and the local/regional energy market. The local government also runs a project were all public transport are running on biogas sourced from local feedstock. The aim is to facilitate a transition for households and business to biogas by creating and supporting a growing local/regional biogas market.

In this paper we take a closer look at these policy practices. We will look at the political arguments and actual local government action in these two cases were the city´s local government interact with other societal actors (business and citizens) in efforts to create local/regional markets within two socio-technical systems (energy and transport). We will consider if this is a functional way to facilitate low carbon transitions within socio-technical systems. We will also consider how these endeavours is perceived by political actors (majority and opposition) and if any conflicting interests in the choice of the market pathway can be observed in political processes in the city.