Climate consultants and complementarity: Local procurement, green industry and decarbonization in Australia, Singapore, and the United States

Abstract

Private climate expertise matters for the local political economy of urban climate governance. City climate policy often pairs decarbonization efforts with investment into the growth of local “green industries”, seeking complementarity between environmental and economic goals. Underappreciated is that this pairing is increasingly achieved by local government purchasing of decarbonization services directly from private expertise within local green industries. This involves local government procurement of climate mitigation services from local environmental services firms, where service delivery facilitates greenhouse gas emissions reduction, while the local nature of procurement generates new growth in existing green industries. By these means, local governments can achieve both decarbonization and local green industry growth goals with the same policy stroke. Three case studies of this strategy in Singapore, Knoxville (USA) and Melbourne (Australia) between 2005 and 2012 are examined in detail. This study contributes new evidence of the role of local procurement in the process of eco-state restructuring, a concept which describes a more active role of the state in negotiating environmental and economic interests in climate change governance.