Styles of decarbonization

Abstract

ABSTRACT What characterizes the relations amongst actors engaged in decarbonization? I posit that no single characteristic can satisfactorily explain the heterogeneous politics of reducing emissions and propose the concept of styles as the patterned ways in which actors relate to each other to decarbonize. Based on qualitative fieldwork, I compare two projects for a national policy mandating the use of low-carbon technologies – India’s Smart Cities Mission – and find variation in their styles. In Rajkot, local state, business, and policy elites with a variety of interests converged to impose decarbonization on a site used by herders as pasture. In Davanagere, local industry, workers, state bureaucrats, and experts independently bargained over a plan that accommodated livelihoods in a puffed rice manufacturing district. I theorize styles as a systematic heuristic to capture variation in the politics of reducing emissions and identify surprising coalitions for decarbonization.