Abstract
Industrial policy has re-emerged as an area of policy discussion in recent years, but the characteristics and role of industrial policy vary across national contexts. Particularly, the role of industrial policy in the ongoing energy transitions of different countries has received little attention. We introduce an analytical framework to explore the relationship between industrial policy and different energy policy trajectories and apply this framework in an empirical analysis of the perceptions of key stakeholders in the energy sector in Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark. We identify four key elements of industrial policy – industrial visions, industrial policy instruments, industrial policy governance, and employment concerns – and based on these analyse perceptions of how industrial policy has facilitated changes in the energy system of the three countries. We find significant differences in industrial policy styles for low-carbon transitions, reflecting broader differences in political institutions and cultures. Our analysis shows how sustainability transitions relate to industrial policy, and which elements can act as enablers and barriers to low-carbon transitions.
Highlights
Industrial policy has been defined as “structural policies designed to strengthen the efficiency, scale and international competitiveness of domestic industrial sectors, typically containing an element of national champions, of self-reliance in bringing about growth and development” ([1]: 273)
We start by examining the status of low-carbon energy transition and industrial policy in Germany, the UK and Denmark (Section 4.1)
We focus on actor perceptions of the role of industrial policy and its different elements on the lowcarbon energy transition in each country (Section 4.2)
Summary
Industrial policy has been defined as “structural policies designed to strengthen the efficiency, scale and international competitiveness of domestic industrial sectors, typically containing an element of national champions, of self-reliance in bringing about growth and development” ([1]: 273). While industrial policy has had some overlap with innovation policy through the search for the sources of domestic competitiveness, much attention has in the past focused on supporting existing industrial pro cesses. New industrial policy is more closely connected to innovation policy, emphasising regional economies and place-based characteristics, diversification of industrial structure, and entrepre neurial discovery – argued to lack a normative stance [2]. Two (partly contrary to one), green industrial policy has emerged as a notion making an explicit connection to environmental objectives [10,11]. Green in dustrial policy, broadly defined as “government intervention to hasten the restructuring of the economy towards environmental sustainability” ([12]: 522), has limited grounding in the traditional industrial policy literature [13]. A key aspect of green industrial policy is shifting eco nomic trajectories away from traditional industries towards new, ‘greener’ technological industrial futures, for example, by expanding industrial capacities around renewable energy manufacture [10,14]
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