Responsible or reckless? A critical review of the environmental and climate assessments of mineral supply chains

This paper critically reviews and identifies gaps in the methodologies used to analyze the environmental impacts of mineral and metal global supply chains. Of specific focus are assessments of the extraction and production of minerals and metals needed for a low-carbon energy future. Current trends and projections suggest that the future low-carbon energy system will have greater material needs than the current one. Thus, it is important to better understand the full impacts of increased resource extraction to help ensure a sustainable and just transition. This review reveals that existing methodologies are currently insufficient in capturing the full suite of environmental, social, and governance concerns. The copper supply chain is used as a case study to highlight areas that require refined or augmented methodologies, with an in-depth examination of the corporate practices of Freeport-McMoRan, Vale, and BHP. Together, this review of existing methodologies and examples from the copper supply chain highlight the incomplete and variable nature of environmental and climate reporting within the mining industry. Areas for future work are defined with the goal of advancing accounting frameworks for the mining industry and the associated supply chain

Public perceptions of electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid (V2G): insights from a Nordic focus group study

Public awareness and acceptance of electric vehicles (EVs) are essential components to catalyse a faster uptake of more sustainable passenger transport as well as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mobility. As such, public perceptions are central to decarbonize transportation and help capture the co-benefits of reduced local pollution, noise emissions, and oil dependency. However, we observe that the general public is often treated statically and seen as either problematic or peripheral to questions within the transport and energy studies communities. This paper asks two questions. First, given increasing adoption in the Nordic region, how do ordinary members of the public perceive EVs? And second, how do they perceive V2G? With these questions, the paper offers an international and in-depth assessment of public perceptions of EVs and V2G systems across five Nordic countries using original data drawn from eight focus groups. We find eight themes of relevance for future research and policy. These include often discussed insights like an EV’s environmental sustainability, range, and charging or price, but also insights around themes like social status, sound, and power and acceleration. Additionally, we asked the participants whether V2G strengthens (or weakens) the desirability of EVs. The paper ends with a reflection on the knowledge discrepancies between national focus groups and individuals with and without EV presence and the different informational requirements that are needed to address them

Navigating implementation dilemmas in technology-forcing policies: a comparative analysis of accelerated smart meter diffusion in the Netherlands, UK, Norway, and Portugal (2000-2019)

This paper addresses the implementation of technology-forcing policies in open-ended diffusion processes that involve companies and regulators as well as consumers and civil society actors. Mobilising insights from the societal embedding of technology framework and policy steering theories, we investigate two implementation dilemmas that relate to an overarching tension between flexibility (to enable technological learning and stakeholder engagement) and coordinated push (to focus actors and drive deployment): a) early or late formulation of initial targets, and b) technocratic or emergent-adaptive implementation styles. We investigate these dilemmas with four comparative case studies of smart electricity meters between 2000 to 2019, which diffused rapidly in the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal, but decelerated in the UK. We relate these differences to policy choices, and identify two patterns for successful implementation of technology-forcing policies: a) start with early targets and a technocratic style, but make adjustments if there are substantial protests or technical problems, and b) start with an emergent-adaptive style and formulate and enforce targets later, once technical and social stabilisation has occurred

Energy cultures and national decarbonisation pathways

Global climate change negotiations are delivering expectations that all nations must commit to rapidly reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. It is unclear why there is such significant variability in nations' decarbonisation ambitions. We use the lens of ‘energy cultures’ to explore what insights this analysis can offer to this question. We suggest that a country's ‘energy culture’ can be envisaged as the interplay between normative, material, institutional and policy-related attributes of the national decision-making apparatus. This provides a meta-framework which underpins our exploration of factors which previous studies suggest may shape national energy ambitions. We apply this framework to case studies of India, Denmark, China and Russia to see whether it has explanatory power across diverse cases, initially using four empirical indicators. There was no consistent correlation between the indicators and low-carbon ambitions, which led us to draw more deeply and inductively on the cultural influences evident in each nation over a 30-year period. Our findings suggest that national low-carbon ambitions are strongly cultural, contingent upon how any particular nation sees the role of energy, and the choices, policies, investments and actions that flow from this. This energy culture may constrain the extent to which nations are willing to respond to the challenge of climate change. The analysis indicates how nations require very different stimuli if they are to strengthen their low-carbon trajectories. We conclude that the concept of national energy cultures is a useful addition to approaches that are examining how to raise national low-carbon ambitions

Placing people at the heart of climate action

This is the final version. Available on open access from Public Library of Science via the DOI in this record. Profound societal change along with continued technical improvements will be required to meet our climate goals, as well as to improve people’s quality of life and ensure thriving economies and ecosystems. Achieving the urgent and necessary transformations laid out in the recently published IPCC report will require placing people at the heart of climate action. Tackling climate change cannot be achieved solely through technological breakthroughs or new climate models. We must build on the strong social science knowledge base and develop a more visible, responsive and interdisciplinary-oriented social science that engages with people and is valued in its diversity by decision-makers from government, industry, civil society and law. Further, we need to design interventions that are both effective at reducing emissions and achieve wider societal goals such as wellbeing, equity, and fairness. Given that all climate solutions will involve people in one way or another, the social sciences have a vital role to play.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

The Energy-Water Nexus

Speakers for the 2013 Symposium included Professor Joshua P. Fershee of West Virginia University; Professor Gabriel E. Eckstein of Texas A&M University School of Law; Professor Keith B. Hall, Louisiana State University; Professor Donald T. Hornstein from the University of North Carolina; Professor Shi-Ling Hsu, Florida State University; Professor Rhett Larson, of the University of Oklahoma; Professor Amanda Leiter, American University; Professor Uma Outka, University of Kansas; Professor Justin Pidot, of the University of Denver; Professor Melissa Powers from Lewis & Clark College; Mr. Jefferson D. Reynolds, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality; Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool & Mr. Alex Gilbert from Vermont Law School; and Ms. Andrea Wortzel, of Troutman Sanders LLP