Institutions, discourses, and the promotion of renewable energy

Audley Genus

doi:10.1002/wene.169

Abstract

The article argues that a more rounded understanding of the factors affecting the promotion and uptake of renewable energy technologies may be obtained by bringing together neoinstitutional theory—informed by insights from institutional economics and organizational sociology—and discourse analysis. Such a discourse‐institutional view has a number of benefits: (1) institutionally, it moves analysis beyond the usual if understandable focus on the activities and policies of government; (2) institutions as norms, professional standards, culture, and ingrained habit are given due attention; (3) the language basis of institutions is duly recognized; and (4) connections among language in text, and in discursive and social practice are acknowledged, as are their role in processes of (non) institutionalization. The article summarizes the suggested approach, in doing so highlighting its relevance to the diffusion of renewable energy technologies. WIREs Energy Environ 2016, 5:119–124. doi: 10.1002/wene.169This article is categorized under: Energy Policy and Planning > Economics and Policy Energy Policy and Planning > Systems and Infrastructure Energy Research & Innovation > Economics and Policy

Highlights

The energy system is a source of great difficulty currently due to its propensity to emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases, contributing to anthropogenic climate change
At the same time renewable and distributed approaches to energy supply and use, which might require or benefit from the involvement of users or active citizens are available and known to have great potential to contribute to climate change policy objectives
Why? How may this be explained? It is argued here that institutional and discourse analysis can be of benefit, if employed in a complementary way. a BOX 1 An inherently resilient energy system

Summary

Institutional economics

Despite differences in the breadth with which the term is applied, institutions are generally understood as the rules of the game that people devise, which ‘reduce uncertainty by providing structure to everyday life’. 3 One of the interesting insights to be gained from texts in economics which deal with institutions concerns the appeals made to phenomena which are in part sociological and psychological, as well as economic. Normative rules – in conjunction with various institutional carriers, mechanisms and processes - have a role to play in promoting innovative development and diffusion of clean energy, and in the persistence of high carbon and non-renewable energy This may be connected with professionalism – both in the sense of the (lack of) professionally sanctioned standards and guidelines for practice, as well as implicated in the professional pride felt at firm level and by individual employees working with either incumbent nonrenewable or marginal renewable energy technologies. 6 Bringing language to the centre of attention enables the analysis of both the constraining aspects of institutions and the transcendence or transformation of prevailing rules of the game This recognises language as a regularity in social relations and as something that humans use creatively to advance new ideas and persuade others of the desirability and feasibility of certain objectives and means for achieving them. The message that is conveyed feeds idea of the illegitimacy of renewable energy, at the same time thwarting institutionalisation and contributing to persistence of unsustainable practices of energy generation and use (which one could think of this as a lack of deinstitutionalisation of pervasive high carbon patterns of production and consumption in contemporary UK society)

The role of discourse in institutions and institutional change

Findings

Social practice