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The purpose of this paper is to present a case study, showing a local government's capacity in addressing energy consumptions and local greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in its administration areas. This case demonstrates some strengths and weaknesses in the actions of local institutions to complement the national and European efforts in addressing climate change problems.

The paper starts by considering the need to address global changes by a multi‐level governance system, in line with the subsidiarity principle proposed by the European Commission for the implementation of its policies. According to this principle, different institutional levels should intervene through control and reduction of GHG emissions from their operational scale. In particular, this paper reports an ongoing activity of urban planning carried out by a local municipality of Northern Italy, Martellago (Venice Province), that has focused on the energy and GHG reduction as a priority.

The analysis identified some topics to be addressed by urban plans; their higher or lower effectiveness in respect to the climate change adaptation and mitigation needs; and some constraints to be addressed by an enforced integration of different administrative levels of governance.

This paper shows the importance of local planning in climate change issues, which is seldom considered, particularly in practice. In fact, while the elaboration of energy and urban plans is not mandatory for small municipalities, some voluntary actions – like for Martellago – show that their wide applications could contribute importantly to the efforts to decrease GHG emissions.