The pace of governed energy transitions: agency, international dynamics and the global Paris agreement accelerating decarbonisation processes?

The recent debate on the temporal dynamics of energy transitions is crucial since one of the main reasons for embarking on transitions away from fossil fuels is tackling climate change. Long-drawn out transitions, taking decades or even centuries as we have seen historically, are unlikely to help achieve climate change mitigation targets. Therefore, the pace of energy transitions and whether they can be sped up is a key academic and policy question. Our argument is that while history is important in order to understand the dynamics of transitions, the pace of historic transitions is only partly a good guide to the future. We agree with Sovacool’s [1] argument that quicker transitions have happened in the past and may therefore also be possible in the future globally. The key reason for our optimism is that historic energy transitions have not been consciously governed, whereas today a wide variety of actors is engaged in active attempts to govern the transition towards low carbon energy systems. In addition, international innovation dynamics can work in favour of speeding up the global low-carbon transition. Finally, the 2015 Paris agreement demonstrates a global commitment to move towards a low carbon economy for the first time, thereby signalling the required political will to foster quick transitions and to overcome resistance, such as from incumbents with sunk infrastructure investments

The enactment of socio-technical transition pathways: a reformulated typology and a comparative multi-level analysis of theGerman and UK low-carbon electricity transitions (1990–2014)

tThis paper aims to make two contributions to the sustainability transitions literature, in particular theGeels and Schot (2007. Res. Policy 36(3), 399) transition pathways typology. First, it reformulates anddifferentiates the typology through the lens of endogenous enactment, identifying the main patternsfor actors, formal institutions, and technologies. Second, it suggests that transitions may shift betweenpathways, depending on struggles over technology deployment and institutions. Both contributions aredemonstrated with a comparative analysis of unfolding low-carbon electricity transitions in Germanyand the UK between 1990–2014. The analysis shows that Germany is on a substitution pathway, enactedby new entrants deploying small-scale renewable electricity technologies (RETs), while the UK is on atransformation pathway, enacted by incumbent actors deploying large-scale RETs. Further analysis showsthat the German transition has recently shifted from a ‘stretch-and-transform’ substitution pathway to a‘fit-and-conform’ pathway, because of a fightback from utilities and altered institutions. It also shows thatthe UK transition moved from moderate to substantial incumbent reorientation, as government policiesbecame stronger. Recent policy changes, however, substantially downscaled UK renewables support,which is likely to shift the transition back to weaker reorientation

Reassessing the Integration of European Electricity Markets: A Fractional Cointegration Analysis

This study extends existing literature on the assessment of electricity market integration in Europe, by developing and testing hypotheses on the convergence of electricity wholesale prices, and adopting a time-varying fractional cointegration analysis. In addition, the potential impacts of some special events that may affect system capacity (new interconnection, market coupling, increase in share of intermittent generation) on spot and forward markets are considered and evaluated. Daily spot prices from February 2000 to March 2013 of nine European electricity spot markets (APX-UK, APX-NL, Belpex, EPEX-FR, EPEX-DE, IPEX, Nordpool, Omel and OTE) and month-ahead prices in four markets (French, British, German and Dutch) from November 2007 to December 2012 are investigated. Results show that unit root tests, which are generally used in the literature to test market integration, are inadequate for assessing electricity spot market convergence, because spot prices are found to be fractionally integrated and mean-reverting time series. Furthermore, spot price behaviour and their association with different markets change over time, reflecting changes in the EU electrical system. One-month-ahead prices, by contrast, were found to have become more resilient to shocks and to follow more stable trends

Exploring the role of phase-out policies for low-carbon energy transitions: the case of the German Energiewende

The energy sector plays a significant role in reaching the ambitious climate policy target of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C. To this end, technological change has to be redirected and accelerated in the direction of zero-carbon solutions. Given the urgency and magnitude of the climate change challenge it has been argued that this calls for a policy mix which simultaneously supports low-carbon solutions and also deliberately drives the discontinuation of the established technological regime. Yet, the effect of such phase-out policies on the development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies has received little attention in empirical research so far. This paper addresses this gap by taking the case of the transition of the German electricity generation system towards renewable energies – the so-called Ener-giewende. Based on a survey of innovation activities of German manufacturers of renewable power gener-ation technologies conducted in 2014 it explores the impact such destabilization policies – most prominent-ly Germany’s nuclear phase-out policy – may have on technological change in renewable energies. By drawing on descriptive statistics and combining insights from earlier regression analyses we find evidence that Germany’s nuclear phase-out policy had a positive influence on manufacturers’ innovation expendi-tures for renewable energies and was seen as the by far most influential policy instrument for the further expansion of renewable energies in Germany. The insights resulting from our explorative analysis have important implications for the literature on policy mixes and sustainability transitions regarding the ‘flip sides’ to innovation and the crucial importance of destabilization policies for unleashing ‘destructive crea-tion’. We close by discussing policy repercussions for ongoing debates on policies for accelerating the phase-out of coal to meet climate change targets