Energy Governance Research Articles

States of power: Energy imaginaries and transnational assemblages in Norway, Nepal and Tanzania

Support to energy, particularly hydropower, has formed an important element of many donor programmes. How have such interventions shaped the emergence of particular energy imaginaries in the countries engaged with? ‘Energy imaginaries’ can be understood as the set of institutions, logics, values, and visions that spur ideas around what sources of energy and forms of energy governance best foster development. Adopting a historical and comparative perspective and drawing on the notion of ‘transnational assemblages’, we explore the nature of energy aid interventions and the dynamic shifts of specific actors and discourses in bilateral relations. We focus on Norway, a leading player in energy support, and two of its long-term partner countries, Nepal and Tanzania. Through document analysis and interviews with key actors, we trace how Norwegian energy transnational assemblages have formed part of evolving energy imaginaries in Nepal and Tanzania in radically diverging ways. In Nepal, dominated by an energy imaginary of hydropower as ‘white gold’, efforts to foster a bottom-up-driven indigent energy sector were eclipsed by an emphasis on facilitating privatisation, resulting in a chaotic fragmentation of the energy landscape. In Tanzania, the donor-state energy imaginaries were centred on grandiose projects of hydropowered industrialisation bound for failure, but later revived as part of an authoritarian project. The study untangles a history of changing and partially conflicting discourses, offering a richer and more nuanced understanding than studies focused on single projects or policies. We highlight how the idea of transnational assemblages can be useful in understanding shifting imaginaries of energy development.

Governing the Fix: Energy Regimes, Accumulation Dynamics, and Land Use Changes in Japan’s Solar Photovoltaic Boom

This article examines the role of recent reforms to Japan’s energy governance regime in stimulating fixed capital investments in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and analyzes the investment trends and land use changes that are emerging as a result. Following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Japanese government passed a feed-in tariff (FIT) to incentivize renewable energy production, followed by the liberalization of the small-scale retail power market. Although recent geographical scholarship suggests that fixed capital investments in renewable energy might function as a socioecological fix for capital accumulation, analyzing these reforms through the lens of institutional political economy reveals a crucial limitation facing investors seeking renewed accumulation through a socioecological fix: The state, as the extraeconomic agent charged with sustaining accumulation at the national scale, maintains the capacity to shape conditions of profitability in the electric power sector. Additionally, this article offers a typology of investment patterns and land use changes that have resulted from the growing market in renewables. The guaranteed return on investment offered by the FIT has stimulated demand for space to site solar projects. This demand, coupled with Japan’s strict farmland protections, has led investors to pursue projects in novel configurations that challenge established assumptions about power density and the land demands of solar PV. By bringing the insights of Marxian state theory to bear on the political ecology of fixed infrastructure, this article contributes an empirical analysis of the political ecological dimensions of state action in governing renewable energy transitions.

Public policy spillovers from private energy governance: New opportunities for the political acceleration of renewable energy transitions

Focused on a particular facet of private climate and energy governance – corporate demand for and procurement of carbon-free electricity from renewable sources – this study uncovers a new set of opportunities for the political acceleration of energy transitions. In seeking to understand the grid-greening impacts of corporate renewable procurement and demand, the study reveals that private energy and electricity governance can actually serve to alter the politics of energy transitions. Specifically, the analysis presented in this paper shows that public–private governance interactions can destabilize the politics of carbon lock-in by expanding coalitions for decarbonization and triggering positive private–public regulatory feedbacks. Grounded in the empirical context of the US electricity sector – a dynamic site of coexistence and interaction between public and private energy governance, the research and analysis presented in this paper show that business engagement in private, market-driven greening of the electricity sector can advance renewable transition both directly, through buyer-driven increases in renewable generation capacity; and indirectly, through turning corporate renewable buyers into the beneficiaries and supporters of public policy and regulatory action that advances decarbonization.

Trump’s “America first” energy policy, contingency and the reconfiguration of the global energy order

The global energy system is in transition to a new energy order characterized by the emergence of the United States as a net oil exporter, the shale revolution and the gradual shift towards low-carbon sources and renewables. The shale boom in the US was a game changer, as was the election of Donald Trump as US president. Trump pushed an ambitious “America first” agenda aimed at transforming the US into a global energy superpower. The purpose of this article is two-fold: first, it outlines the key pillars of the emerging global energy order. Second, it underscores the role of contingent events, a factor neglected by some previous studies because of their reliance on what A.O.Hirschman (1970) termed “paradigmatic thinking”. The recent transition in the international energy order is an outcome of two paramount, yet largely unanticipated events: the shale revolution in the US and Trump’s neomercantilist and unilateralist economic policies. While contingencies are an inherent feature of social reality, the scenario approach can be a useful heuristic for dealing with uncertainties. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these developments for global energy governance.

PENGARUH PROYEK TRANS ASEAN GAS PIPELINES (TAGP) TERHADAP ARAH KEBIJAKAN LUAR NEGERI INDONESIA DI BIDANG KERJASAMA ENERGI TAHUN 2002-2015

ABSTRACT ASEAN has announced plans to construct a natural gas pipeline network through the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline Infrastructure Project, or TAGP. Furthermore, the advocates of TAGP expect it to promote economic development, earn foreign exchange, mitigate the risks of climate change, and enhance regional energy security. Energy Security is also a system, composed of national policies and international institution, therefore it requires policies and a business climate that promote investment and development and innovation to ensure that adequate supplies and infrastructure will be available, in a timely way, and in the future. Afterwards, Indonesia as a led country in ASEAN which has a natural gas energy resources that are relatively large then considering the direction of Indonesia’s foreign policy to cooperate on the global system through cooperativeenergy governance framework. The direction of Indonesia’s foreign policy has basic optimistic to promote economic growth and embrace the ASEAN region to be more integrated. Keywords: ASEAN, TAGP, Energy Security, Indonesia’s Foreign Policy, Inter-regional Cooperation, Cooperative Energy Governance

Dissemination Challenges of Liquefied Petroleum Gas in Rural India: Perspectives from the Field

We look at infrastructure and policies in India around the distribution of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to rural communities and incorporate the experiences and perspectives of dissemination personnel. This qualitative study is part of a larger case control study aimed at examining strategies to promote adoption and sustained use of clean cooking technology, particularly among the rural poor in southern India. Our focus on dissemination personnel helps illuminate extant policy implementation and strategies to increase LPG uptake among the poor. Thematic analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews points to gaps in workforce training, infrastructure, and interface of the technology with social norms. Reduction in refill costs and removal of LPG subsidies was widely suggested to increase uptake and use. Themes identified underscore that policies promoting LPG for the poor will have limited success in the absence of commensurate infrastructure for LPG dissemination and awareness. Despite being primary policy beneficiaries, the under-representation of women within energy governance such as LPG distribution systems identified in this study presents a gap that interventions should focus on. Perspectives from those at the frontiers of implementation of a national energy policy provide insights into the high points as well as operational setbacks to help understand dissemination strategies within energy systems.

Conceptualising the Energy Constitution: Lessons from Northern Ireland

In order to elucidate key aspects of the relationship between energy and constitutionality, Muinzer and Ellis (2017) have mapped the full spectrum of UK reserved/devolved constitutional powers and thrown into relief the complex form and nature of low carbon energy powers within that nexus. This low carbon-specific framework, and an understanding of its complex, contingent qualities and interconnected constitutional principles provides insight into the extent to which constitutional arrangements reify the territoriality of energy governance and policy capacity, structuring the policy and governance relationships between national and substate multi-level decarbonisation processes. This study develops this ‘Energy Constitution’ framework with reference to fuel poverty, honing in on the UK and according particular attention to Northern Ireland, a UK jurisdiction that often receives little attention in energy policy studies, but that has had notably high levels of fuel poverty, in addition to the weakest substate economy and the most energy insecure circumstances in the UK.

Fragmentación y cooperación en la gobernanza energética global

El artículo aborda la interdependencia energética y la gobernanza mundial de la energía desde una perspectiva de economía política internacional. Describe la naturaleza fragmentada de la gobernanza energética, así como la tendencia hacia una mayor inter-polaridad, analizando por qué la hegemonía está limitada por la interacción de una miríada de regímenes internacionales energéticos dedicados a aspectos diferentes que conforman un ‘complejo de regímenes energéticos’ en lugar de un único régimen internacional. Por último, el trabajo analiza la gobernanza mundial de la energía desde el prisma de la provisión de bienes públicos globales, evaluando el impacto sobre la misma de las capacidades materiales, ideacionales e institucionales internacionales.

Governing energy consumption in China: a comprehensive assessment of the energy conservation target responsibility system

The governance of energy consumption in China is of environmental significance from the standpoints of preventing local air pollution and global climate change. At the heart of China’s energy governance system is the energy conservation target responsibility system (ECTRS). This article examines this important governance instrument from three key aspects. First, it explains the role of the ECTRS in China’s authoritarian yet decentralized governance system. Second, it traces the development of the ECTRS over the last decade, with a specific focus on the reforms introduced in the 13th 5-Year Plan (2016–2020), particularly the energy caps. Third, it analyzes the limitations of the ECTRS and provides a policy outlook in the context of growing domestic and international interests in energy conservation.

Research on energy efficiency improvement in a supply chain with discontinuous market demand.

In many countries, products are divided into several grades according to their energy efficiencies by the government. It leads to the discontinuous market demand for the products with different governmental energy efficiency certifications and further influences the relevant strategies of firms. Considering both increasing consumer environmental awareness and strict governmental grading standard, this paper develops a Stackelberg differential game between a manufacturer and a retailer. The optimal pricing strategies and the energy efficiency efforts are studied, and the influences of discontinuous market demand on those optimal strategies are discussed. The results show that the governmental grading standard has an important boosting impact on the energy efficiency level of products. When the product's energy efficiency level is lower than the governmental standard, the manufacturer will make great efforts on energy efficiency improvement. It would be beneficial for both the manufacturer and the retailer to use penetration pricing strategy during this period. Once the governmental standard is met, the manufacturer will reduce his effort significantly. At this time, taking the skimming pricing strategy is beneficial for both the manufacturer and the retailer. Moreover, a higher governmental standard and a larger consumers' preference difference can motivate the manufacturer to work harder to improve energy efficiency. They also lead to a higher price after the product is certified as the high energy efficiency product by the government.

Transforming the governance of energy systems: the politics of ideas in low-carbon infrastructure development in Mexico and Vietnam

ABSTRACT Transforming energy systems is increasingly recognized as a societal response to mitigating climate change, with potential to catalyse a paradigmatic shift towards decarbonization. The article looks at the diversity of claims presented to ascribe meaning to policy problems (i.e. structural conditions, contextual technical or ideational appeals to values), and framed within wider institutional perspectives for reform, development, and strategies for addressing climate change in Mexico and Vietnam. The findings suggest both governments maintain a more exclusive than inclusive form of energy governance and retain centralized power over renewable energy and climate change mitigation responses. This is not only because of technological infrastructural lock-ins, but also because they maintain a more exclusive than inclusive form of energy governance that is justified and legitimized by the need for energy supply and access security, and green growth as a source of continuous economic growth. Framing broader energy reforms as part of climate change mitigation goals allow for incumbent actors to further legitimise a conservative neoliberal agenda. These two cases offer insights into how newly emerging economies are facing energy sector reforms while being confronted with energy sector transformations dictated by the climate change mitigation agenda.

How Do Configuration Shifts in Fragmented Energy Governance Affect Policy Output? A Case Study of Changing Biogas Regimes in Indonesia

Biogas technology to support rural livelihoods and low-carbon development has been developed in different projects and programs in the Global South over the last few decades. However, the existence of multiple projects, actors and designs involved may lead to so-called fragmentation in governance. This research addresses the fragmented governance amongst the biogas programmes in Indonesia to study their impact on the implementation; the numbers of biodigesters disseminated and knowledge transferred. Drawing on concepts of fragmentation, regime effectiveness, and policy output, the research uses data from interviews with relevant actors, supplemented with documents review. Findings show that the governance architecture of biogas regime in Indonesia consists of different types of biogas programmes championed by different types of actors pursuing different objectives. There had been patterns and periodical shifts of configuration within the Indonesian biogas regime, i.e., from administrative fragmentation (2007–2009), to conflictive fragmentation (2010–2012), to cooperative fragmentation (2013–2016), and reduced fragmentation (2017). Shifting from administrative to cooperative fragmentation resonates with the increase of the number of biodigesters dissemination more than fourfold in ten years, from 800 in 2007, to 37,999 in 2016. The distribution of power within the governance architecture among government bodies, NGOs, and the private sector influenced the speed of implementation and innovation of the biogas programs. This suggests that a higher degree of distribution of power and cooperation within a governance architecture contribute to increasing policy output of the regime complex of renewable energy.

Empires built on sand: On the fundamental implausibility of reactor safety assessments and the implications for nuclear regulation

AbstractThis paper explores the nature of expert knowledge‐claims made about catastrophic reactor accidents and the processes through which they are produced. Using the contested approval of the AP1000 reactor by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as a case study and drawing on insights from the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature, it finds that the epistemological foundations of safety assessments are counterintuitively distinct from most engineering endeavors. As a result, it argues, those assessments (and thus their authority) are widely misconstrued by publics and policymakers. This misconstrual, it concludes, has far‐reaching implications for nuclear policy, and it outlines how scholars, policymakers, and others might build on a revised understanding of expert reactor assessments to differently frame, and address, a range of questions pertaining to the risks and governance of atomic energy.

Sacrifice zones and the construction of urban energy landscapes in Concepción, Chile

This article examines how national energy policies in Chile constitute urban energy landscapes characterized by environmental and spatial inequalities. The concept of urban energy landscapes is deployed to explain the spatial patterns resulting from energy governance and energy conflicts in the metropolitan area of Concepción, a metropolitan region of strategic importance in the configuration of national energy policy. These urban energy landscapes result from the constitution of 'sacrifice zones' that reflect an extractivist model of energy production. The combination of qualitative interviews and transect walks reveals different aspects of a dual arrangement of energy infrastructure and urbanization. The city's fragmented landscapes emerge from the coexistence of energy infrastructure and associated industries, with daily activities of communities that have little to do with these industries but live in their shadow. Conflicts in these urban energy landscapes are intense, with every inch of space contested by competing modes of 'being urban.' The urban energy landscape in Concepción is an expression of a clash of social and economic power with local priorities.Keywords: urban energy landscapes, industrial landscapes, sacrifice zones, energy conflicts, coal energy, Chile

"Anishinaabe time": temporalities and impact assessment in pipeline reviews

Indigenous ways of living that embrace multiple temporalities have been largely supplanted by a single, linear colonial temporality. Drawing on theoretical insights from Indigenous geographies and political ecology, this article considers how pipeline reviews come into being through contested temporalities and how dominant modes of time dispossess Indigenous peoples of self-determination in energy decision-making. In particular, Anishinaabe clan governance – a form of kinship that provides both social identity and function based on relations to animal nations – is undermined in colonial decision-making processes. Through analysis of documents from Canada's National Energy Board and interviews with Anishinaabe pipeline opponents, I explore tensions between Anishinaabe and settler temporalities reflected in the 2012-2017 Line 9 pipeline dispute in the Great Lakes region. These include divergent understandings of periodicities, timeframes, kinship relations, and the role of nonhuman temporalities in decision-making. Colonial temporal modes that have been imposed on Indigenous communities foreshorten timescales, depoliticize kinship relations, and discount nonhumans in decision-making – resulting in narrower and more short-sighted project reviews than Anishinaabe temporalities would support. I argue that the rich concepts of kinship, queerness, continuity, and prophecy embedded in Anishinaabe temporalities can inform strategies for decolonizing energy review processes and open possibilities for Indigenous self-determination in energy decision-making.Keywords: Anishinaabe studies, Two-Spirit, Indigenous geographies, temporalities, Indigenous knowledge, energy governance, pipeline, National Energy Board

Private authority in tackling cross-border issues. The hidden path of integrating European energy markets

ABSTRACTWe investigate private authority in European Union (EU) energy governance in order to address two research questions: First, how has authority been conferred on, and acquired by private actors? Second, to what extent has this lateral shift of authority been contested and on which grounds? The paper links the literatures on regulatory governance and private authority. This allows us to shed light on an issue that tends to be neglected in the discussion about the transfer of competencies in the energy field: the horizontal transfer of authority. In our case study about the role of transmission system operators (TSOs) in the creation of an internal electricity market, we identify three distinct settings where both the level of sovereignty-based contestation and the shift towards private authority vary. We find that private rulemaking has gained in importance due to functional expertise requirements, but also because it provides an escape route in a context of political contestation.

Energy Governance in South Korea: Long-Term National Energy Master Plans Since 1997

Energy, as backbone of economic growth and public welfare, as well as contributor to enhancing or mitigating climate change, is one of the most pressing policy issues for many countries. Overall, national-level energy sector reforms in many countries have been modest without a long-term low-carbon policy framework or coherent set of policies (Gunningham, 2012). It might be due to several characteristics of energy. Energy, as a ‘polycentric’ and ‘mega-issue,’ is inextricably interlinked, vertically and horizontally, with many other sectors and their actors, such as industry, trade, national security, transportation, environment, urban development, and finance (Lesage, Graaf, & Westphal, 2010; Ostrom, 2010). However, energy has been somewhat obscure area left to its own technical experts operating mostly within the conventional realm of energy security and supply (Gunningham, 2012). Governments tend to protect their citizens against energy price fluctuations in fossil fuels or keep energy prices low to earn domestic political support (Dansie, Lanteigne, & Overland, 2010; Goldthau & Sovacool, 2012). Another dimension of energy lies in its path dependency and inertia. Human life and socio-economic activity is so deeply embedded in and dependent on energy that the mutual feedback loop between individual choices and the energy system is reinforced (Goldthau & Sovacool, 2012). Power system, for example, show strong path dependencies of “carbon lock-in” due to the large investments perpetuating a mostly fossil fuel based system of electricity production and consumption (Goldthau & Sovacool, 2012). And alternative options, despite higher performance or lower costs, remain ‘locked-out’ due to vested interests (Markusson & Haszeldine, 2009). Thus, institutional legacies protect status quo (Goldthau & Sovacool, 2012). These challenging characteristics of energy make energy policymaking fragmented and inconsistent with very little coordination between most of relevant actors and make necessary energy reform at most modest. Thus, a daunting but important question is which forms of energy governance (i.e., how to make energy policies with whom) will be more effective in formulating better sustainable energy policies, given expert-oriented and fragmented policy-making and the path dependence and inertia of the prevalent energy systems and their infrastructure, rooted in vested interests of socio-economic entities. Could diverse stakeholders collaborate effectively for sustainable energy policy-making, or necessary energy sector reform? The next chapter discusses briefly two models that explain policy changes through collaboration or conflict: consensus-based regulatory negotiation, and conflict expansion. Then, this paper intends to analyze how governance for national energy policymaking in South Korea (hereafter Korea) has been evolved and to identify which model explains Korean energy governance better. Finally, this paper evaluates current energy governance in Korea and suggests how it should evolve again.

Income Growth, Energy Consumption and the Role of Energy Efficiency Governance

There exists a strong correlation between income growth and energy consumption. In general, their effects are positive (or non-significant) in both directions. However, none of the existing works control properly for double causality. In this vein, energy governance has a remarkable importance to regulate energy use, which may favor economic growth through a more efficient use of energy in the production process. For a set of 32 OECD countries, we construct an energy efficiency governance index for the 2000-2015 period, which is used as an external instrument to characterize the effect of energy consumption on income growth. We find that the index only affects income growth through its impact on energy consumption growth. The estimated elasticity between (energy-governance-driven) energy consumption and income growth is close to unity, which almost double the elasticity commonly found in the literature and triple the one estimated under OLS fixed effects. For the other side of causality, we use the previous estimations to construct an adjusted GDP growth series, where the response of economic activity to energy consumption growth (driven by energy governance) is ruled-out. We obtain a large negative elasticity (about -3.0), which is of opposite sign to our OLS fixed effects estimates and to the usual finding in the literature. Thus, energy consumption driven by improvements in energy efficiency governance enhances growth, while income growth improves a more efficient use of energy.

Understanding the governance of innovative energy sharing in multi-dwelling buildings through a spatial analysis of consumption practices

In collective self-consumption (CSC) communities, citizens come together to produce renewable energy and need to find ways to organise the sharing of consumption at the (micro-)local level. The articulation between the exposure of individual practices and the collective objective of lowering consumption outside solar periods leads to dynamics of social control and privacy preservation that vary according to the nature of spaces. Observing two operations of solar energy sharing in multi-dwelling buildings, our ethnographic analysis investigates the practices of occupying different types of space – from the common to the private - as well as the scenes of discussion among individuals. In this sense, our research reveals a strong intertwining between, on the one hand, the governance of energy communities and, on the other, the spaces in which consumption practices, energy accounting and deliberation processes take place.

ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF SOLAR AND WIND PRICES ON THE AUSTRALIA ELECTRICITY SPOT AND OPTIONS MARKETS USING A VECTOR AUTOREGRESSION ANALYSIS

This paper examines the impact of solar and wind prices on the Australian electricity spot and options markets for the period January 2006 to March 2018. Using a vector autoregression analysis, we examine both the direction of influence and influence absorption through Granger causality testing, the impulse response function, and forecast error variance decompositions. We identify a unidirectional Granger causal relationship between the solar and wind electricity prices and the spot prices in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia. The forecast results suggest that the solar and wind electricity prices reduce the spot and options electricity market prices. These results are important for energy policymakers and government organizations that support renewables, as their use not only decreases the wholesale spot prices, but also encourages initiatives to explore and switch to alternative energy sources, which tend to be more cost effective and environmentally friendly.