IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute

As municipalities are key actors in addressing sustainability challenges, it is crucial that they learn and amplify new solutions for urban climate governance. This paper uses a Swedish municipality as a case study to explore how cutting-edge projects can be used to generate learning and amplify climate mitigation within and across municipal departments. Interviews with civil servants from all ‘building departments’ at the case municipality were analyzed using urban climate governance, governance learning, social learning, organisational learning, urban experimentation, amplification, and institutional capacity theories. The findings include three major results: (1) Cutting-edge projects mainly lead to single-loop learning and replication within departments, while double-loop learning and deep scaling across departments are seen as important by strategic civil servants. (2) Focusing on recipients of learning, rather than treating cutting-edge projects as disseminating teachers, supports learning. (3) The various theories used are closely interconnected but not interchangeable, collectively offering valuable insights into the role of cutting-edge projects in learning across departments.