In recent years, countries’ responses to climate change mitigation and adaptation have gained noticeable incentives. The Paris Agreement consolidated international political efforts in this regard and can be considered as the first global commitment that put developed and developing nations together to undertake efforts to address climate change.

Despite these institutional advances, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached the critical level of 400 ppm for the first time in about 5 million years. This figure is 13% higher than in 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established. Moreover, the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) brings only one-third of the emissions reductions required by 2030. Behind this low level of effectiveness in terms of climate action exists an unaddressed governance challenge, which must work in a crosscutting and multi-level policy arena to produce better low carbon transition policies and improve the transparency and the synergy between public and non-public stakeholders.

By using a political economy approach to analyse a real case, this research intends to examine what has been the role of centre of government institutions (CoG) within the formulation, co-ordination and harmonisation of low carbon transition policies and understand how such a type of institution works within a multi-level framework and co-ordinate carbon transition policies with subnational governments. In doing so, this research will fill the gap in climate governance literature regarding the participation of CoG in such a policy arena. Moreover, finding evidence for the centre of government´s relevance to the climate agenda will be an essential tool to set institutional arrangements to make pro-climate policies prevail over initiatives that undermine the climate change agenda. Finally, the outcomes from this research might be helpful for countries to promote a better and more stable business environment to attract investments for mitigation and adaptation measures, which is one of the hardest issues for climate action.