Client-oriented evaluation of ‘creative destruction’ in policy mixes: Finnish policies on building energy efficiency transition

Paula Kivimaa,Hanna-Liisa Kangas,David Lazarevic

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.002

Abstract

This article connects the literatures of policy evaluation, policy mixes and sustainability transition. It utilises client-oriented evaluation to examine national policies in Finland from the perspective of low-carbon buildings transition. In Finland, energy efficiency has traditionally received less focus in energy and climate policy strategies compared to renewable energy. Since 2007, energy efficiency policies addressing buildings gained force. Sixteen new policy instruments were implemented during 2007–2014 and several revisions were made to the building code energy efficiency requirements. To what extent these changes contribute to ‘creative destruction’ in the policy domain is uncertain. Therefore, we conduct a client-oriented evaluation of the policy mix from the perspective of a boundary actor—integrated energy service companies—to analyse its potential for facilitating zero-carbon transition. The findings show a divergence of opinions regarding the policy mix’s disruptive influence. Where potentially disruptive policy instruments can be found, their impact is reduced due to incoherence in policy implementation processes. The usability of client-oriented evaluation for policy mix analysis is found limited on its own but useful in complementing top-down policy evaluations. We also propose an additional function to the creative destruction policy mix: ‘changes in organisational and institutional practices’, linking to the coherence of policy mixes.

Highlights

The December 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change has placed greater political legitimacy on the need to curtail high carbon intensive practices than ever before
Our client-oriented evaluation of the Finnish policy mix on building energy efficiency was focused on two issues: (1) how were the two sides of ‘creative destruction’ proposed by Kivimaa and Kern [1] present in the policy mix, and (2) how did the interviewees bring forward issues linking to the coherence of policy processes, consistency of goals and instruments, and comprehensiveness of the policy mix
Combining two recent conceptual frameworks created to study policy mixes in the context of sustainability transitions [1,7], we, first, analysed the extent to which the building energy efficiency policy mix in Finland supports creative destruction towards zero-carbon buildings and, second, how coherence of policy processes, consistency of policy goals and instruments, and comprehensiveness of the policy mix was considered by a group of boundary actors, namely integrated energy service companies (IESCs)

Summary

Introduction

The December 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change has placed greater political legitimacy on the need to curtail high carbon intensive practices than ever before. A crucial element to address this is the formation of policy mixes that address both the creation of innovations that reduce carbon emissions and involve measures to disrupt the status quo [1]. These kinds of policy mixes link to the idea of ‘transformative’ innovation policy [2] or economic policy [3] with implications on policy organisation, orientation and evaluation. Recent literature on policy mixes has begun to partly move away from analysing narrow, designed portfolios of policy goals and instruments towards a consideration of broader mixes of policies Such broader mixes may exist across administrative domains and have negative or positive implications on transitioning towards low carbon and climate resilient futures. Kivimaa and Virkamäki [4]

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion