“Delivering on Expectations”: The Potential of the Climate Budget to Facilitate Transformative Change

Climate budgets are increasingly used by municipalities as a framework for monitoring emissions and aligning local actions with broader climate goals. Despite their growing use, their potential to support transformative climate change remains underexplored. This study examines the formal configuration of management controls in climate budgets and discusses their potential to facilitate transformative change. Drawing on the levers of control framework and 2010) the concept of dynamic tensions, we conducted a qualitative document study of climate budgets from eight municipalities in Norway. Our findings identify a predominance of controls centred on targets, indicators, and monitoring. By contrast, controls intended to promote dialogue and learning, establish behavioural boundaries, or articulate shared values and purpose were considerably less visible. The climate budgets are therefore well equipped to monitor predefined emission-reduction measures and support accountability, but provide a more limited formal basis for questioning assumptions, reconsidering priorities, and developing new responses. The study shows that performance information may contribute to transformative change when used as an input to dialogue and learning processes. Municipalities should therefore complement emissions monitoring with clear climate-related boundaries, shared purpose, and processes that use performance information to explore alternative responses.