Politics Of Energy Transitions Research Articles

Towards failed renewable energy communities? Activist attempts to change market conditions in the Danish wind energy market

Denmark is known for its bottom-up, participatory approach to developing renewable energy communities, and yet wind power has become ‘big business’ in Denmark and other countries, a market affair for large, private renewable energy companies. Drawing on the performative perspective on markets, this paper examines a non-governmental organization's (NGO's) attempts to innovate the market for wind power deployment in Denmark, to include renewable energy communities. Based on document analysis as well as qualitative analysis of interviews and observations, conducted from 2015 to 2020, we highlight what has shaped a paradigm shift in wind power development – from a cooperative and community-based approach to one based on market competition. With this as a backdrop, we analyse two ‘episodes’ – the first one took place before the introduction of competition-based tenders, and the second one occurred after it – where the NGO proposes two alternative market devices to reframe the market for wind power production, i.e., an alternative ownership model, and alternative evaluation criteria for winning bids in the tendering scheme. Both attempts failed and are illustrative of how agency is stymied in, and through, the dynamic interactions taking place within the market assemblage. Our findings show how market devices matter, i.e., how opportunities for successful collective action expand or contract depending on how the market is framed. By directing attention to market devices, we emphasize the ways in which politics and political action are made possible, augmenting research on the power and politics of energy transitions.

Conflicted transitions: Exploring the actors, tactics, and outcomes of social opposition against energy infrastructure

Given the growing frequency, severity, and salience of social mobilization and community action on energy and climate issues, in this study we systematically explore the configurations of types of infrastructure, actors, tactics, and outcomes of recent opposition to energy transitions across seven carbon-intensive regions in Asia, Europe, and North America. Based on both a literature review and an original dataset of 130 case studies spanning the past decade, we track opposition to a wide range of energy infrastructure in these regions, including low-carbon options such as renewable energy and nuclear power; provide network analyses of the actors and coalitions involved in such events; and develop a typology and frequency analysis of tactics (such as litigation or protest), and outcomes (such as remuneration, policy change, concessions, or labor protections). We show that the politics of energy transitions in carbon-intensive regions varies significantly from country to country and across types of energy, and we discuss how the configurations of infrastructure, actors, tactics, and outcomes can be explained by differences in national institutions and their responses to global or supranational pressures. By bringing both a sociotechnical and comparative perspective to the global analysis of social movements and energy transitions, we suggest how goals of energy transition are refracted through national and subnational institutions and through local mobilizations both in support of and opposed to those transitions.

Energy political ecologies in the South Pacific: the politics of energy transitions in Vanuatu

Abstract In this article, I develop a political ecology analysis of Vanuatu’s grid electricity policies, with a specific focus on Espiritu Santo Island. I show how the global political economy looms large in shaping the island’s energy geographies. Colonial legacies, ideologically conflictive donor aid programmes, multinational corporate legal discords, parliamentary political caprices and the vicissitudes of the local environment all intersect to shape the spatial dynamics of electricity access that raises numerous energy justice concerns. The development of the island’s electricity infrastructure is not neutral; rather, it is a socio-technical product of these political economy mediations.

Race and the politics of energy transitions

Once again, the issue of race is dominating world events. Acts of police violence and the removal of statues of slave traders have drawn attention to issues of structural inequality, institutional racism and historical exploitation, particularly that which is associated with colonialism. I want to argue in this perspective article that the study of energy transitions needs to take issues of race more seriously than it has generally done so to date, and I want to point to some ways in which it can do so, building on emerging work and incorporating insights from other areas of scholarship and activism. I suggest four areas of intersection between race and the study of energy transitions as possible entry points for deepening engagement with these issues: the historically racialised production of energy systems; the racialised governance of energy systems; the socially uneven (including racialised) impacts of energy transitions pathways and the racialised politics of contestation and resistance.

Ambiguous interventions: Capacity remuneration mechanisms and the politics of energy transition in Britain and Germany

This paper analyses the introduction of capacity remuneration mechanisms (CRMs) in Europe, focusing on Britain and Germany. We show how CRMs in these countries are evolving from government interventions to deal with electricity system reliability issues to become important policy instruments aimed at addressing a wide range of economic and societal challenges related to decarbonisation. We pay particular attention to the ambiguous role that CRMs play as tools for governing the decarbonisation of electricity systems. On the one hand they are being legitimised by governments as a means of facilitating the integration of renewables, while at the same time they are seen by many actors as a contributor to carbon lock-in and a means of prolonging the fossil-fuel industry. We discuss key factors shaping the ambiguous role of CRMs in electricity system decarbonisation and their relation to the politics of sustainable energy transitions.

Coalitions, framing, and the politics of energy transitions: Local democracy and community choice in California

A significant topic of research in the analysis of the politics of sustainability transitions is the role of coalitions. This study builds on previous research that utilizes discourse coalition and framing theories to develop a method for analyzing coalitions that integrates the analysis of three, inter-related changes: the challenger-incumbent relationship, the internal composition of both types of coalitions, and the choices of frames. The study focuses on community choice aggregation (CCA) in California, which is a decades-long industrial transition movement that has contributed to local, democratic control over electricity in the state. The analysis shows how both the CCA-coalition and the utility coalition underwent changes in composition over time and how the changes were connected with frame innovation, with counterframing, and with different types of policy conflicts. Thus, the study develops a general framework for an integrated analysis of coalitions and frames that emphasizes the connected changes of coalitions and frames over time. The analysis shows how the changing discourse of energy-transition politics is connected with coalition composition, ongoing experimentation with counterframing, and the evolving challenger-incumbent relationship. For the pro-CCA coalition, frames regarding pricing benefits recede and are replaced with frames involving energy democracy, good government, and job creation.

Politics of Energy Transitions: A decade after Nigeria's biofuels crusade, a tale of non‐commercialization and lost opportunities

AbstractThere is a growing literature on the politics of sustainability transitions and its correlation with policy changes at the national level. This paper contributes to this debate by taking stock of energy transition processes in Nigeria's biofuels sector. It explores the socio‐economic externalities that influenced the biofuels policy, how this policy process was negotiated and why it failed. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, it was observed that a drop in oil production and the need for economic diversification (GDP growth) created a favourable condition for the development of biofuels in 2005. However, the biofuels policy was insufficiently articulated when the window of opportunity opened. In the last 10 years, fluctuations in oil prices and changes in government have closed the window of opportunity for biofuels. Taken together, the results suggest that to successfully engineer transition, policy processes of this nature require a re‐articulation of vision based on emerging externalities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment