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Academic research, policy reports and many agencies and organizations have focused on the role of cities in contributing to implement climate policies designed to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. This led the French government to compel all local authorities responsible for over 20,000 inhabitants to adopt the so-called PCAETs (plans climat-air-énergie territorial/local climate, air and energy plans) by 2018. The purpose of our paper was to understand how these local plans seize on climate issues, by highlighting both the objectives they claim to achieve and the main ways used to reach them. First, we identified in the scientific literature the main levers available that enable cities to have an effect regarding climate change. Then, we compared these possibilities to the governance objectives of three middle-sized French cities assumed to have adopted ambitious PCAETs. We show that all three cities have energy saving and local coordination objectives, but that they act on only one of the three other levers they could theoretically mobilize (energy production, changes in infrastructure and modification of the urban structure). We also demonstrate that these cities implement their plan by attempting to extend the climate issues to the whole city council services and that they use labelling distinctions to motivate policy actors.