Cities are responsible for roughly two-thirds of global primary energy consumption, and are therefore expected to play an essential role in reaching European climate change targets. Innovative urban planning methods are in particular needed to benefit from energy efficient measures beyond the building scale. The aim of this paper is thus to explore the challenge of energy planning in cities, with the goal of providing a framework to better understand the problems and identify perspectives to tackle them. First, the evolution of urban planning is briefly described, with a focus on its progressive widening to include energetic issues. Then, European guidelines and perspectives on the subject are highlighted based on key policy documents. Finally, a systematic framework is proposed to describe the various and complex aspects of energy planning in cities. A few practical examples from two cities are presented to illustrate possible actions in line with the problem definition and European recommendations.