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The overall objective of the web-based consumer information tool Euro-Topten is to promote the market transformation towards energy efficient products. Euro-Topten informs consumers about the most energy efficient products in various categories and thereby aims to directly influence the purchasing decisions of individuals or professional buyers. Providers of internet-based information tools are confronted with the problem, that there is no bidirectional interaction with the users. Hence, it is difficult to evaluate if the specific needs of users are addressed, if and how the user processes this information and to what extent the information influences the user's decision making process. To study these questions, a web-based survey was conducted in two consecutive rounds. In the first round the survey focused on the assessment of the information tool itself and the motivation for using the Euro-Topten websites. This survey was online on all active Euro-Topten partner websites from October to December 2012. In total, 1791 users completed the survey. In the second round, a subset of the survey population was queried again. 1,043 participants agreed to take part in a more comprehensive follow up survey, 383 completed the second survey between May and July 2013. The second survey concentrated on the question how Euro-Topten has influenced the purchasing behaviour of the survey participants. This gave significant insights on how the information on the Euro-Topten websites has affected purchasing decisions of the surveyed users. Based on a comparison of performance indicators of the most efficient products recommended on the Euro-Topten websites with performance indicators of a base case product available on the market, avoided energy demand could be estimated for those users, who bought products from the Euro-Topten list. Based on these results, two impacts of Euro-Topten could be estimated: The influence of Euro-Topten on purchasing decision of users and the associated r

Climate change and thus low-carbon transitions are global challenges, which require commitment and effort on all political levels. As international climate politics has approached its limits over the last two decades, the role of cities has simultaneously gained in importance. Many cities1 worldwide have committed to ambitious climate protection targets, which often exceed national targets. However, cities cannot act in isolation. Their opportunities for action are embedded in an (inter)national policy framework, which may either support or hinder local actions. This gives rise to the question: which opportunities for climate protection do cities really have in a political system of multi-level governance? This question can be illustrated using the city of Hamburg as an example for the German climate policy regime. The city aims to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 2 million metric tons and attempts to quantify the impact of local and national policies and actions using a bottom-up monitoring approach. We therefore analyse more than 400 local actions with respect to the induced CO2 emission reductions. We also take a closer look at national and European policies and their impacts on local energy use and emissions. In total, 15 policies and instruments - broadly ranging from instruments to foster energy efficiencyin residential and non-residential buildings, in appliances and in the transport sector, to support renewable energy sources (including biofuels) and to uptake CHP - are considered. Our approach consists in measuring separately the impact of local and national policies and actions on urban CO2 emissions. While the city of Hamburg has implemented many policies and actions, our results show that, a significant proportion of its CO2 reduction is due to national policies, in the context of the German "Energiewende", which cannot or can only indirectly be influenced by the city. The results imply that local commitment and effort is essential in addressing the gl