‘Cleaner innovation’? A political process approach to environmental aspects of process technology innovations

This thesis seeks to improve our understanding of the integration of explicit environmental motives into innovation processes. This will be done by applying insights from the social shaping of technology field as well as organisation studies to the area of environmental innovation, which is dominated by environmental management literature. The environmental innovation literature typically conflates the motives behind environmental innovations and the resulting technological outcomes, thus reifying environmental motives and causing confusion regarding the concepts of ‘environmental innovation’ and ‘cleaner technology’. We will here disentangle motives and outcomes and contextualise innovations in terms of other motives as well as other practices than those labelled environmental. An underlying assumption in the literature is also that firms are monolithic, rational actors where management decisions are implemented by straightforward translations into technological solutions, neglecting any influence from other actors in the firm. We will here instead investigate the processual and political aspects of innovations and their environmental aspects. Special attention will be given to the roles and expertise of engineers, environmental staff and managers. Moreover, a lot of the environmental innovation literature is determinist in its attempts to promote ‘best practice’ and the greening of firms. To avoid this we will, through a focus on the processual and structural dimensions of firm organisation, seek to distinguish between one-off contingencies and longer lasting changes. We will also be sensitive to the possibility that organisational change may lead to worse as well as better environmental performance. This thesis looks at chemicals industry firms since they have a long history of exposure to environmental regulation, and are likely to have well-developed routines and expertise for environmental innovations. As a comparison dairy industry firms are also studied. To avoid decontextualisation and environmental management determinism, we chose cases irrespective of whether the environmental motive was central to the innovation or not. The cases include both core technology and end-of-pipe innovations. The data was collected mainly through semi-structured interviews with actors in the firms. The analysis is based on comparison of cases in the two industrial sectors, and in Sweden and Scotland. A central result of the thesis is that we can and should distinguish between ‘unintentional’, ‘intentional’ and ‘ambitious’ cleaner technology innovations, depending on the role of environmental motives in the innovation process. We also saw that the environmental label could be doing purely rhetorical work independently of the design choices made. In fact, we saw no example of ambitious cleaner technology, and few cases of intentional cleaner technology, which is surprising given the choice of chemicals industry cases. In terms of firm organisation, we have developed the concept of the Company Social Constitution to capture the structured context of environmental work in innovation processes. This helped us explain the roles of environmental staff as buffers and boundary spanners, in competition with engineers regarding technological work, and depending on current and past regulatory pressure. Finally, we were able to put forth a new theorisation of environmental championing that captures both structural and action aspects of organisational life to explain this behaviour

Geoengineering Governance, the Linear Model of Innovation, and the Accompanying Geoengineering Approach

This paper aims to address the lack of critique of the linear model in geoengineering governance discourse, and to illustrate different considerations for a geoengineering governance framework that is not based on a linear model of technology innovation. Finally, we set to explore a particular approach to geoengineering governance based on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s notion of ‘technology accompaniment

The responses of older adults to smart energy monitors

By 2020, every UK household has the option to have a Smart Energy Monitor (SEM) installed, displaying electricity consumption monetarily. The success of the £11 billion scheme in enabling people to reduce energy consumption is questioned amongst researchers and relatively little is known about older adults' (60 + years) responses to SEMs. This paper explores older adult responses to SEM feedback and compares them to those of younger-middle aged adults (25–59 years). A qualitative, interpretative methodology was used with participants from 20 households recording their SEM experiences during one month through a diary, and post-study semi-structured interview allowing methodological triangulation. Data analysis indicated that older adults were generally more aware of their energy use pre-SEM and practiced energy saving behaviours learnt from upbringing. This appeared to result in negligible positive benefits and low engagement with the device. Other limiting factors included lack of technical skills and confidence, and the risk of losing the comfort and convenience of using electrical appliances. The device also triggered negative emotions and depression amongst some older adults surrounding electricity usage, potentially leading to dangerously cold homes. Consequently, the scheme's appropriateness is questioned, especially for older adults, and improvements are suggested for SEMs and the scheme

Political obstacles to carbon capture and storage for carbon removal

Using carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) for carbon removal is crucial to climate policy, but implementation at scale is at risk owing to political obstacles. Climate policies must avoid relying on empty promises of CCS for carbon removal without necessary financial resourcing and support emissions reductions separately from carbon removal

Eckpfeiler erweiterte Produzentenverantwortung

Die erweiterte Produzentenverantwortung stellt ein wichtiges Leitprinzip für eine integrierte Produktpolitik dar. Seit 1994 ist sie in Schweden gesetzlich verankert. Verordnungen regeln die Nachgebrauchsphase von Verpackungen, Altpapier, Reifen, Autos und Elektronikprodukten. Ökologische Erfolge sind sichtbar. Angesichts des bisher begrenzten Einflusses auf das Pro­duktdesign ist darauf zu achten, dass weitere Anreize für Produktinnovationen gesetzt werden

Balancing a budget or running a deficit? The offset regime of carbon removal and solar geoengineering under a carbon budget

Abstract: The idea of the carbon budget is a powerful conceptual tool to define and quantify the climate challenge. Whilst scientists present the carbon budget as the geophysical foundation for global net-zero targets, the financial metaphor of a budget implies figuratively the existence of a ‘budget manager’ who oversees the budget balance. Using this fictive character of budget manager as a heuristic device, the paper analyses the roles of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM) under a carbon budget. We argue that both CDR and SRM can be understood as ‘technologies of offset’. CDR offsets positive carbon emissions by negative emissions, whereas SRM offsets the warming from positive greenhouse gas forcing by the induced cooling from negative forcing. These offset technologies serve as flexible budgeting tools in two different strategies for budget management: they offer the promise of achieving a balanced budget, but also introduce the possibility for running a budget deficit. The lure of offsetting rests on the flexibility of keeping up an ‘appearance’ of delivering a given budget whilst at the same time easing budget constraints for a certain period of time. The political side-effect of offsetting is to change the stringency of budgetary constraints from being regulated by geophysics to being adjustable by human discretion. As a result, a budget deficit can be normalised as an acceptable fiscal condition. We suggest that the behavioural tendency of policymakers to avoid blame could lead them to resort to using offset technologies to circumvent the admission of failure to secure a given temperature target

The pore space scramble:challenges and opportunities for subsurface governance

There is a rich literature on environmental governance that provides critiques and conceptual tools on how various environmental 'arenas' or overlapping global systems should be governed eg. climate, energy, oceans (Cherp et al., 2011, Berkes, 2006, Underdal, 2010). In this paper we argue that the geological subsurface should be considered as a new arena for governance in its own right. The arguments for this are presented by considering current and future challenges the subsurface will face as its utilisation evolves and intensifies, particularly in the context of both energy security and low carbon energy. Three main challenges are highlighted; ownership, access and long term stewardship. These challenges are presented using the illustrative context of subsurface pore space for the long term storage of CO2 from Carbon Capture (CCS). This is presented in the UK context but ultimately has implication for global subsurface governance going forward

Policy instruments to control Amazon fires:a simulation approach

Abstract Agricultural fires are a double-edged sword that allow for cost-efficient land management in the tropics but also cause accidental fires and emissions of carbon and pollutants. To control fires in Amazon, it is currently unclear whether policy-makers should prioritize command-and-control or incentive-based instruments such as REDD +. Aiming to generate knowledge about the relative merits of the two policy approaches, this paper presents a spatially-explicit agent-based model that simulates the causal effects of four policy instruments on intended and unintended fires. All instruments proved effective in overturning the predominance of highly profitable but risky fire-use and decreasing accidental fires, but none were free from imperfections. The performance of command-and-control proved highly sensitive to the spatial and social reach of enforcement. Side-effects of incentive-based instruments included a disproportionate increase in controlled fires and a reduced acceptance of conservation subsidies, caused by the prohibition of reckless fires, and also indirect deforestation. The instruments that were most effective in reducing deforestation were not the most effective in reducing fires and vice-versa, which suggests that the two goals cannot be achieved with a single policy intervention

Towards a cultural political economy of mitigation deterrence by negative emissions technologies (NETs)

This paper offers a new theoretical perspective on the risk that geoengineering interventions might deter or delay mitigation (previously typically described as moral hazard). Drawing on a brief review of mitigation deterrence (MD) in solar geoengineering, it suggests a novel analytical viewpoint going beyond and contrasting with the methodological individualist, managerialist and economist analyses common in the literature. Three distinct registers to assist identification and interpretation of situations and processes through which MD might arise are elaborated and compared. The paper shows that moving from a realist register via a cultural register to a cultural political economy register, makes it clearer how and why misperceived substitutability (between negative emissions technologies (NETs) and mitigation) and narrow climate policy goals matter for MD. We have also identified several plausible mechanisms for MD under a neoliberal political regime. The paper argues that MD cannot be overcome simply by better informing decision makers (the ‘realist’ response), or even by opening up the standard techno-economic framing of climate change and our responses (the ‘cultural’ response). The paper also concludes that the entire political regime that has evolved alongside specific economic interests is implicated in MD, and that the likelihood and significance of MD probably remain underappreciated and understudied