Abstract
This report assesses the extent to which citizens’ assemblies can serve as an effective governance tool for addressing emissions in two complex municipal domains: transport and zero-emission construction sites. Drawing on the 2025 Trondheim Waste-to-Energy CCS citizen assembly as a reference case, the analysis shows that deliberative, representative participation can strengthen legitimacy, improve public understanding of technical climate measures, and generate socially grounded recommendations in areas marked by uncertainty, trade-offs, and contested interests.
In the transport emissions domain, citizens’ assemblies appear particularly well suited to informing policy choices where public acceptance, behavioural change, and distributional impacts are central. Assemblies can help municipalities navigate trade-offs between emissions reduction, accessibility, and equity, and can enhance legitimacy for measures such as road-space reallocation, pricing schemes, or modal shifts. Its usefulness is highest for medium scale, locally grounded interventions, while effectiveness depends on alignment with regional and national transport governance structures.
For zero-emission construction sites, the potential of citizens’ assemblies is more contextdependent. While the domain is technically specialized and less visible to the public, assemblies can add value in large projects or district-level developments by articulating community expectations, legitimizing stricter standards, and balancing public and industry interests. Overall, the report concludes that citizens’ assemblies are a valuable complementary tool, most effective when carefully designed, well integrated into decision-making processes, and used where legitimacy and social acceptance are key constraints on climate action.