Abstract

The Covenant of Mayors (CM) is the mainstream European movement involving local authorities who voluntarily commit to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources within their territories with the aim of reducing CO2 emissions and meet the European Union objectives by 2020. One country that has a greater number of signatories of this agreement is Spain. This article analyzes which factors influence the decision of Spanish local authorities to join the ever-growing movement. An empirical model is formulated to describe the behavior of Spanish local governments, this being a binary choice model which is a function of various political, economic, and technical factors. Among the prominent factors that influence this decision are population, availability of renewable energy, fiscal and environmental stress, citizens’ political preference, the contagion effect of neighboring municipalities, the existence of covenant coordinators, and finally, economic motivations.