The second foresight seminar run by LSE Cities in partnership with the Hertie School of Governance entitled “Energy Transitions: Implications for City Governments” took place in Berlin on the 28th of February 2015. This event was supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the main funder of the LSE Cities project that investigates new urban governance, represented by Alaina Harkness. Among the audience were a wide range of academics, policy makers, practitioners and activists who were exploring Germany’s energy transition and its implications for the case of Berlin and German cities more broadly but also engaging on a general debate on urban governance change and related triggers. Welcome notes were given by the Dean of the Hertie School of Governance Helmut K. Anheier as well as Philipp Rode, LSE Cities Executive Director.

The event included two separate sessions with two presentations each. The first session presentations, on multi-level governance in the context of energy transitions and chaired by Kai Wegrich, came from Christian Gaebler, Permanent Secretary of the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment as well as Genia Kostka, Professor of Governance of Energy and Infrastructure at the Hertie School of Governance, followed by a discussion from the audience. The second session, chaired by Nuno Ferreira da Cruz on the integration of energy and related sectors at the urban nexus, was conducted by Claudia Kemfert, Professor of Energy Economics and Sustainability at the Hertie School of Governance and Head of the department of Energy, Transportation, Environment at the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW Berlin) as well as Florian Lennert, Director of the Intelligent City Programme at InnoZ, followed by another round of discussions.