Depoliticising energy policy: transformative ideas won’t happen when technocrats are in charge

Political economy and public policy scholars have argued that UK governance has been increasingly depoliticised through the displacement of responsibility to market actors; the creation of ‘arms length’ bodies; and the power of experts to make decisions that have wide ranging implications. Here, Caroline Kuzemko argues that technocratic energy policymaking hinders the sorely needed pursuit of transformative energy policy

Climate change benchmarking : constructing a sustainable future?

This article analyses discourses on climate change and mitigation through the deconstruction of European Union (EU) rhetoric and practices on climate benchmarking. It critically examines the motivations behind climate benchmarking, the methods used to construct international benchmarks, and the reasons for variety in domestic compliance. Germany and the United Kingdom are analysed as cases where domestic politics drive very different reactions to the practice of climate mitigation, differences that have been largely hidden by the type of quantification that EU benchmarking involves. Through an exploration of the methods used to formulate climate benchmarks, the article demonstrates that these commitments have privileged certain responses over others, and thus helped to paint a picture of EU benchmarks as ‘reformist’ but not ‘radical’. EU climate benchmarks often end up concealing more than they reveal, making it difficult to fully engage with the scale and complexity of the far-reaching domestic changes that are required in order to comply with agreed international benchmarks. The deficiencies of benchmarks as a mechanism for driving long-term sustainable change, and importantly discouraging harmful policies, may ultimately undermine their credibility as a means for governing climate change at a distance in the EU

Re-scaling IPE : local government, sustainable energy & change

Sustainable energy has emerged as a new area of policy, in part as a response to greater political acceptance of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Local governments are understood to be potentially important actors here, but also as having been constrained in their political capacities by neoliberal political institutions and the centralised nature of energy systems. This paper combines insights from energy IPE, political geography, new institutionalism and socio-technical transitions to build a conceptual framework for analysing local sustainable energy policymaking in relation to a broad range of influencing factors. It explores the ways in which policy and material aspects of energy systems inter-relate; considers ways in which ideas, contestation and learning are fundamental to change; and understands local governments as actors in their own right rather than ‘takers’ of global or national rules. This approach recognises specific influences of embedded institutions and infrastructures over local policymaking, but also allows us to better comprehend the implications of political and energy re-scalings for their capacity to govern and to influence political debates at national and global levels. It concludes with a plea for IPE to take better account both of sector specifics as well as of the local scale

UK energy governance in the twenty-first century : unravelling the ties that bind

Repeated claims have been made since the early 2000s that UK energy, and its governance, is 'in transition'. In this thesis it is argued, using a conceptual framework informed largely but by no means exclusively by ideational institutionalism, that although UK energy governance, policy and associated institutions have been undergoing a period of continuous crisis, challenge and change, a policy paradigm shift cannot as yet be claimed. This is because UK energy governance processes have not fully rejected some of the ideas upon which the 'pro-market' system was founded in the early 1980s, and due to a lack of credibility in alternative frameworks and solutions. Governance practices do, however, appear to show tendential signs of policy paradigm change. This process of change has been initiated largely in response to public and political concerns about the security of energy supplies, which emerged in the mid 2000s, in addition to growing political support in the UK for measures to mitigate climate change. To the extent that any new 'norms' can be claimed it is suggested here that the emergence of an 'energy-security-climate nexus' in energy governance processes is of particular significance. This nexus reflects the appropriation of the idea that domestic energy production is more 'secure' by climate change protagonists looking to encourage support for increased renewable energy production in the UK. It also reflects a long-standing climate idea that decisions about energy and climate policy should be reached through inter-linked processes. This thesis provides an analysis of change and continuity in UK energy governance from 2000 to 2010 with a particular emphasis on the various ideas, about both energy and its governance, that have informed policymaking as well as the alternative narratives which have called for changes. The thesis is informed empirically by a range of policy documents, including White Papers, Acts, reports and formal reviews, presentations by policy-makers and analysts, and secondary literature. This material has been crosschecked against a limited number of unstructured interviews with policymakers, analysts, consultants and Government advisors. Academic, media, thinktank and other third party literature has also been used to inform and construct those narratives which have, over this period of time, presented critiques of and alternatives to the 'status quo' in energy policymaking

Policy, politics and materiality across scales:A framework for understanding local government sustainable energy capacity applied in England

Analyses of local climate change governance and sustainable energy transitions have tended to focus on understanding broader governance networks, within which local governments are important actors. Such approaches often make appeals to (lack of) capacity when seeking to understand the many limits to local sustainability programmes, however local government capacity is rarely given a primary analytical focus. We offer a definition of local government sustainable energy capacity, organise it into six types, and explore it in relation to contextual factors across scales: political institutions; energy and climate change policies and material aspects of energy systems. This heuristic framework is applied to case studies of eight local and combined authorities in England, a country with particularly centralised political institutions and energy systems. We conclude that capacity is a useful lens through which to explore the extent to which, and importantly how, local governments can become active sustainability actors. We also find that the development of knowledge capacity is becoming increasingly important; that there is some evidence of political re-scaling in energy; and identify some ways in which material aspects of energy systems have significant implications for local government sustainable energy capacity

Business, government & policymaking capacity : UK energy & net zero transitions

The UK government is responsible for meeting legally binding decarbonisation objectives, but it is not on track to meet its next carbon budgets or its net zero emissions 2050 targets. The IPCC’s sixth assessment report is a stark reminder of the importance of all countries, particularly those historically responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, devising and implementing the innovative and just policy solutions required to lower emissions. Within this context, this paper explores the UK’s sustainable energy policymaking, and why it is not on course to meet targets, through the lens of government-business relations. It analyses government policy capacity, incumbent energy company influence, and how complex relations and dependencies have affected sustainable policy (non-)decisions and outcomes. It reveals that an over-reliance on incumbent energy companies in UK energy politics, although understandable given the need to provide affordable and secure energy, has contributed towards insufficient space for cheaper and more just clean energy solutions

The social construction of sustainable futures : how models and scenarios limit climate mitigation possibilities

This article shines a light on the act of social construction of climate change mitigation as a policy issue at the hands of expert bodies enjoying epistemic power, notably the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) as key tools. This is crucial to the politics of tackling climate change as IPCC models and scenarios profoundly shape what are seen as viable futures and mitigation policy options. Analysing how technocratic governance bodies broach climate change, its mitigation, and the associated economic costs and implications, reveals contestations within the technocratic politics of climate change. The particular social construction of mitigation as a policy issue through IAMs and IPCC scenarios has important and real socio-ecological consequences. This engagement with the technocratic politics of mitigation problematises five key assumptions that are fed into modelling, and reveals why and how they matter politically. We also highlight ways in which contestable assumptions built into IPCC IAMs undermine their credibility and usefulness for planning mitigation strategies

Governing for sustainable energy system change: politics, context and contingency

This paper offers a new, interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of governing for sustainable energy system change by drawing together insights from, and offering critiques of, socio-technical transitions and new institutionalist concepts of change. Institutions of all kinds, including rules and norms within political and energy systems, tend to have path-dependent qualities that make them difficult to change, whereas we also know that profound change has occurred in the past. Current decisions to pursue climate change mitigation by dramatically changing how energy is produced and used depend to some extent on finding the right enabling conditions for such change. The approach adopted here reveals the highly political and contingent nature of attempts to govern for innovations, how political institutions mediate differently between forces for sustainable change and forces for continuity, as well as specific interactions between governance and practice change within energy systems. It concludes that it is only by being specific about the contingent nature of governing for innovations, and about how this affects practices in energy systems differently, that those of us interested in sustainability can credibly advise policy makers and drive for greater change