There has been a growing interest in the role of households and local governments in climate change mitigation. In Sweden, lately a number of small scale projects have appeared, involving households and local governments in dialogue. The aim of this paper is to analyze and discuss the potentials of these projects in reducing CO2 emissions. The paper takes its point of departure in Spaargaren´s conceptualization of citizens/consumers in climate change mitigation; i.e. in terms of the ecological citizen, political consumerism and lifestyle politics. The dialogue projects are located in the context of Swedish climate policy developing from top-down project orientation to local initiatives, as exemplified by a number of dialogue projects involving local governments and selected citizens, with the latter as potential role models. This part of the paper is based on interviews with project participants, a survey, and documentary studies. Using Spaargaren´s terminology we find that the participants in the projects are becoming more conscious about their lifestyles as ecological consumers and citizens.
The main conclusion is that this kind of projects may have some success provided the participating households will find long-term support by local governments considering the projects as something more than isolated events. The experience from the projects has to be disseminated broadly in the municipality, and also get tangible results in terms of better public transport, energy savings advice etc. This may also give municipalities the opportunity to present themselves as ecological forerunners, provided that they make local climate change mitigation policy a key priority.