The circular economy (CE) was adopted in 2015 by the European Union (EU). Since its emergence, the CE has proved to be a remarkably powerful idea that has shifted the understanding of the economy, and consequently, it has shaped the EU's economic and environmental policies. The public policy literature theorises such shifts in collective understanding through the concept of policy learning, a process through which ideas are understood and adopted. Yet this literature lacks clarity on the factors that can explain policy learning within a policy community. We use the case of the EU's adoption of the CE to address this gap, exploring the factors that account for the EU's adoption of the CE from the policy-learning perspective. We show how actors in the policy community have constructed, championed, supported and pioneered the CE and argue that these four factors have mutually reinforced each other, leading to policy learning and the wide acceptance of this idea within EU policy-making. Revealing these factors helps advance policy learning theory and contributes to the CE literature and environmental policy and governance literature more generally by furthering our understanding of how and why certain policy ideas are adopted.
{"title":"The Circular Economy in European Union Policy: Explaining an idea's success through policy learning","authors":"Josep Pinyol Alberich, Sarah Hartley","doi":"10.1002/eet.2088","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2088","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The circular economy (CE) was adopted in 2015 by the European Union (EU). Since its emergence, the CE has proved to be a remarkably powerful idea that has shifted the understanding of the economy, and consequently, it has shaped the EU's economic and environmental policies. The public policy literature theorises such shifts in collective understanding through the concept of policy learning, a process through which ideas are understood and adopted. Yet this literature lacks clarity on the factors that can explain policy learning within a policy community. We use the case of the EU's adoption of the CE to address this gap, exploring the factors that account for the EU's adoption of the CE from the policy-learning perspective. We show how actors in the policy community have constructed, championed, supported and pioneered the CE and argue that these four factors have mutually reinforced each other, leading to policy learning and the wide acceptance of this idea within EU policy-making. Revealing these factors helps advance policy learning theory and contributes to the CE literature and environmental policy and governance literature more generally by furthering our understanding of how and why certain policy ideas are adopted.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"34 4","pages":"363-374"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2088","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138496362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that environmental governance in China is a typical example of authoritarian environmentalism. By analyzing the case of energy governance, it indicates that China has become aware that energy and environmental issues are inter-related and complicated and that more diverse and multi-level solutions are required to reach increasingly ambitious national goals. In the context of ongoing state reform, local governments, enterprises, and civil society have played more active roles during the process of policy formulation and implementation. But meanwhile, the central government is tightening regulation and supervision to reduce non-compliance with its energy initiatives and to safeguard national security and social stability. Therefore, energy governance in China has displayed a mixture of democratic and authoritarian elements. The state can adopt different measures based on the specific situation it faces and the final outcome it wants to reach. More broadly, this case reveals that there is no simple relationship between the regime type and its corresponding energy governance model. The study of environmental politics should not be confined to the examination of formal institutional features but also needs to take concrete practices in every country into account.
{"title":"Energy governance in China: A mixture of democratic environmentalism and authoritarian environmentalism","authors":"Chenxi Zhang","doi":"10.1002/eet.2089","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2089","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that environmental governance in China is a typical example of authoritarian environmentalism. By analyzing the case of energy governance, it indicates that China has become aware that energy and environmental issues are inter-related and complicated and that more diverse and multi-level solutions are required to reach increasingly ambitious national goals. In the context of ongoing state reform, local governments, enterprises, and civil society have played more active roles during the process of policy formulation and implementation. But meanwhile, the central government is tightening regulation and supervision to reduce non-compliance with its energy initiatives and to safeguard national security and social stability. Therefore, energy governance in China has displayed a mixture of democratic and authoritarian elements. The state can adopt different measures based on the specific situation it faces and the final outcome it wants to reach. More broadly, this case reveals that there is no simple relationship between the regime type and its corresponding energy governance model. The study of environmental politics should not be confined to the examination of formal institutional features but also needs to take concrete practices in every country into account.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"34 4","pages":"352-362"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2089","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139274504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Accountability in the Anthropocene","authors":"Steven A. Wolf, Nadine Arnold","doi":"10.1002/eet.2080","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2080","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"33 6","pages":"579-582"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136282056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Local authorities are important actors in sustainability transformations, but smaller municipalities generally do not have the same capacities as larger ones to work strategically with climate-related risks and long-term sustainability issues. Our study analyses the efforts of two Swedish local authorities to build capacity for transformative climate governance, paying attention to how structural factors and multi-level governance relations shape local capacity building. Drawing on interviews with municipal staff and the analysis of policy documents we show that both local authorities are increasingly applying experimental climate governance approaches. In Enköping, innovative governance processes support sustainability objectives and promote public–private collaboration. In Kiruna, the necessity to move the town centre has advanced innovation capacity but steals attention from other issues. We conclude that vertical and horizontal multi-level governance relations facilitate capacity building, but in a national context where climate action is largely voluntary, more support is needed for smaller municipalities with limited resources to reach their climate goals.
{"title":"Transformative climate governance in small Swedish municipalities: Exploring the cases of Enköping and Kiruna","authors":"Anna Kronvall, Wolfgang Haupt, Kristine Kern","doi":"10.1002/eet.2086","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2086","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Local authorities are important actors in sustainability transformations, but smaller municipalities generally do not have the same capacities as larger ones to work strategically with climate-related risks and long-term sustainability issues. Our study analyses the efforts of two Swedish local authorities to build capacity for transformative climate governance, paying attention to how structural factors and multi-level governance relations shape local capacity building. Drawing on interviews with municipal staff and the analysis of policy documents we show that both local authorities are increasingly applying experimental climate governance approaches. In Enköping, innovative governance processes support sustainability objectives and promote public–private collaboration. In Kiruna, the necessity to move the town centre has advanced innovation capacity but steals attention from other issues. We conclude that vertical and horizontal multi-level governance relations facilitate capacity building, but in a national context where climate action is largely voluntary, more support is needed for smaller municipalities with limited resources to reach their climate goals.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"34 4","pages":"339-351"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2086","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135291425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Confronted by intersecting ecological and social crises associated with the rise of the Anthropocene, architects of global environmental governance have often attempted to harness accountability claims to single out the individual or organisational actors contributing most significantly to these crises and pressure them to uphold responsibilities to society and the planet. Yet critics have cautioned against excessive reliance on individualised accountabilities as means of tackling planetary crises, given the constrained ability of such approaches to lead the large-scale transformations required to redirect anthropogenic drivers of global environmental change. This article adapts agent-centered approaches to accountability to address such critiques. It is first argued that agent-centered accountability is an important element in broader efforts to support systemic change, helping to identify responsible powerholders, redefine normative standards of responsibility and empower advocates of strengthened global environmental governance to demand compliance with expanded responsibilities. However to take seriously the distinctive demands of large-scale institutional change, such approaches need to be: (a) differentiated in ways that account for the contrasting roles of different individual and organisational actors within de-centred accountability systems; (b) materially extended in ways that enable agents to be held more effectively to account for their contributions to collective social and political processes; and (c) discursively challenged in ways that resist discursive efforts to present individualised accountabilities as substitutes for more radical and large-scale institutional interventions. The article's argument is elaborated and illustrated through exploration of problems and practices of accountability associated with the contested governance of global production systems.
{"title":"Accountability in the Anthropocene: Activating responsible agents of reform or futile finger-pointing?","authors":"Kate Macdonald","doi":"10.1002/eet.2084","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2084","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Confronted by intersecting ecological and social crises associated with the rise of the Anthropocene, architects of global environmental governance have often attempted to harness accountability claims to single out the individual or organisational actors contributing most significantly to these crises and pressure them to uphold responsibilities to society and the planet. Yet critics have cautioned against excessive reliance on individualised accountabilities as means of tackling planetary crises, given the constrained ability of such approaches to lead the large-scale transformations required to redirect anthropogenic drivers of global environmental change. This article adapts agent-centered approaches to accountability to address such critiques. It is first argued that agent-centered accountability is an important element in broader efforts to support systemic change, helping to identify responsible powerholders, redefine normative standards of responsibility and empower advocates of strengthened global environmental governance to demand compliance with expanded responsibilities. However to take seriously the distinctive demands of large-scale institutional change, such approaches need to be: (a) differentiated in ways that account for the contrasting roles of different individual and organisational actors within de-centred accountability systems; (b) materially extended in ways that enable agents to be held more effectively to account for their contributions to collective social and political processes; and (c) discursively challenged in ways that resist discursive efforts to present individualised accountabilities as substitutes for more radical and large-scale institutional interventions. The article's argument is elaborated and illustrated through exploration of problems and practices of accountability associated with the contested governance of global production systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"33 6","pages":"604-614"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2084","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135539633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To accelerate the clean energy transition, it is necessary to better understand the global policy dynamics and motivations behind clean energy policy adoptions and diffusion. This article examines the differential roles of internal and external diffusion factors on decisions to adopt renewable energy policies, that is, Feed-In Tariffs (FIT) and Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), employing a unique blend of cluster analysis and event history analysis. Cluster analysis uncovers a dichotomy in adopting countries. First, early adopters emerge as high-income, democratic countries, mostly energy importers with high CO2 emissions, with OECD and EU membership. Conversely, the second cluster consists of adopters from middle-income, non-OECD, and non-EU nations with lower CO2 emissions. Strikingly, these clusters align with UNFCCC party classifications, underscoring the pivotal role of international agreements. Event history analysis suggests that especially environmental pressure, but also democratic governance and economic development are important when adopting renewable energy policies. Interestingly, environmental endowments seem to be less important. These findings lead to an important question: Are the requisite policy tools readily available to navigate diverse socio-economic, political, and environmental landscapes, and are they deployed in a timely fashion? Beyond these findings, the study also shows that policy diffusion especially through normative emulation and social learning—operationalized as political globalization, OECD member and following regional neighbors—are important for policy adoption, suggesting the importance of such tools for promoting policies. Moreover, distinctive factors come into play when examining the adoption of FIT versus RPS policies, emphasizing the need for nuanced policy approaches.
为加快清洁能源转型,有必要更好地了解全球政策动态以及清洁能源政策采用和推广背后的动机。本文采用独特的聚类分析和事件史分析相结合的方法,研究了内部和外部扩散因素对采用可再生能源政策(即上网电价(FIT)和可再生能源组合标准(RPS))决策的不同作用。聚类分析揭示了采用国的两极分化。首先,早期采用者是高收入的民主国家,大多是二氧化碳排放量高的能源进口国,是经合组织和欧盟成员国。与此相反,第二个集群由中等收入、非经合组织和非欧盟国家的采用者组成,这些国家的二氧化碳排放量较低。令人吃惊的是,这些群组与《联合国气候变化框架公约》的缔约方分类一致,突出了国际协议的关键作用。事件史分析表明,在采用可再生能源政策时,环境压力以及民主治理和经济发展也很重要。有趣的是,环境禀赋似乎不那么重要。这些发现引出了一个重要问题:是否有必要的政策工具来驾驭多样化的社会经济、政治和环境环境,以及是否能及时部署这些工具?除了这些发现之外,研究还表明,政策传播,尤其是通过规范性效仿和社会学习--作为政治全球化、经合组织成员和跟随地区邻国的运作方式--对于政策的采用非常重要,这表明了这些工具对于促进政策的重要性。此外,在研究采用 FIT 政策和 RPS 政策时,不同的因素也会发挥作用,这强调了采取细致入微的政策方法的必要性。
{"title":"A global-scale study on decision making in renewable energy policy: Internal and external factors driving the adoption of Feed-in Tariffs and Renewable Portfolio Standards","authors":"Viktória Döme","doi":"10.1002/eet.2085","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2085","url":null,"abstract":"<p>To accelerate the clean energy transition, it is necessary to better understand the global policy dynamics and motivations behind clean energy policy adoptions and diffusion. This article examines the differential roles of internal and external diffusion factors on decisions to adopt renewable energy policies, that is, Feed-In Tariffs (FIT) and Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), employing a unique blend of cluster analysis and event history analysis. Cluster analysis uncovers a dichotomy in adopting countries. First, early adopters emerge as high-income, democratic countries, mostly energy importers with high CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, with OECD and EU membership. Conversely, the second cluster consists of adopters from middle-income, non-OECD, and non-EU nations with lower CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. Strikingly, these clusters align with UNFCCC party classifications, underscoring the pivotal role of international agreements. Event history analysis suggests that especially environmental pressure, but also democratic governance and economic development are important when adopting renewable energy policies. Interestingly, environmental endowments seem to be less important. These findings lead to an important question: Are the requisite policy tools readily available to navigate diverse socio-economic, political, and environmental landscapes, and are they deployed in a timely fashion? Beyond these findings, the study also shows that policy diffusion especially through normative emulation and social learning—operationalized as political globalization, OECD member and following regional neighbors—are important for policy adoption, suggesting the importance of such tools for promoting policies. Moreover, distinctive factors come into play when examining the adoption of FIT versus RPS policies, emphasizing the need for nuanced policy approaches.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"34 3","pages":"321-335"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2085","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135684526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The global environmental crisis is the result of a complex web of causation and distributed agency, where not even the most powerful individual actors can be considered responsible nor remedy the situation alone. This has prompted multiple calls across societies for transformative social change. What role can accountability play in this context? Starting in the theoretical traditions of microsociology and pragmatic sociology, this article elaborates the role of accountability in social interactions. To provide an account that justifies an action or inaction is here understood as a process of social ordering, where accounts are assessed as acceptable only after they have been tested against higher normative principles. Microsocial practices are, in this way, linked to macrosocial order. The following section turns to the global environmental crisis, showing that the crisis raises normative as well as epistemic challenges. The complexity of the socio-environmental situation makes it hard to know what should be done and opens normative orders and epistemic claims to contestation. This situation provides increased opportunities for strategic maneuvering to justify actions as well as opportunities to question social practices and social order. The article concludes by discussing the role of accountability in climate change. Accountability can serve as a mechanism to attach issues to the current environmental crisis and re-embed decisions and practice in an environmental moral order. As part of a broader palette of instruments, rules and norms, accountability has an important function to play in transforming society towards sustainability.
{"title":"Accountability in the environmental crisis: From microsocial practices to moral orders","authors":"Rolf Lidskog, Adam Standring","doi":"10.1002/eet.2083","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2083","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The global environmental crisis is the result of a complex web of causation and distributed agency, where not even the most powerful individual actors can be considered responsible nor remedy the situation alone. This has prompted multiple calls across societies for transformative social change. What role can accountability play in this context? Starting in the theoretical traditions of microsociology and pragmatic sociology, this article elaborates the role of accountability in social interactions. To provide an account that justifies an action or inaction is here understood as a process of social ordering, where accounts are assessed as acceptable only after they have been tested against higher normative principles. Microsocial practices are, in this way, linked to macrosocial order. The following section turns to the global environmental crisis, showing that the crisis raises normative as well as epistemic challenges. The complexity of the socio-environmental situation makes it hard to know what should be done and opens normative orders and epistemic claims to contestation. This situation provides increased opportunities for strategic maneuvering to justify actions as well as opportunities to question social practices and social order. The article concludes by discussing the role of accountability in climate change. Accountability can serve as a mechanism to attach issues to the current environmental crisis and re-embed decisions and practice in an environmental moral order. As part of a broader palette of instruments, rules and norms, accountability has an important function to play in transforming society towards sustainability.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"33 6","pages":"583-592"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2083","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135725486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The arrival of the Anthropocene requires a profound rethinking of business accountability. A central challenge in this age is the possibility of pushing past planetary boundaries, which may irreversibly propel the Earth system into a new equilibrium that is less hospitable for human civilization. Businesses drive many of the processes contributing to such boundaries, and are powerful political actors who may shape or obstruct the necessary transformations to our socio-economic systems. We therefore need to reconsider their accountability, focused on the following guiding question: Who (in business) should be accountable to whom for what? The answer to this question has important implications for environmental policy and governance. Drawing on a range of recent conceptual and policy developments, I present four major lines of thinking for reconsidering business accountability in the Anthropocene context: to rethink the purpose of business; to acknowledge companies' expanded but shared accountability for productive activities; to heighten collective and individual liability for past and future actions linked to overshooting planetary boundaries; and to recognize business accountability for influencing political and societal processes. Each of these lines of thinking imply policy changes related to, inter alia, corporate governance, due diligence, liability, and lobbying laws. I further call on businesses to actively participate in the large-scale transformation necessary to keep within planetary boundaries by changing not only their production processes, but also product portfolios, business models, legal forms, and political and societal engagement; and highlight avenues for future research.
{"title":"Business accountability in the Anthropocene","authors":"Janina Grabs","doi":"10.1002/eet.2081","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2081","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The arrival of the Anthropocene requires a profound rethinking of business accountability. A central challenge in this age is the possibility of pushing past planetary boundaries, which may irreversibly propel the Earth system into a new equilibrium that is less hospitable for human civilization. Businesses drive many of the processes contributing to such boundaries, and are powerful political actors who may shape or obstruct the necessary transformations to our socio-economic systems. We therefore need to reconsider their accountability, focused on the following guiding question: Who (in business) should be accountable to whom for what? The answer to this question has important implications for environmental policy and governance. Drawing on a range of recent conceptual and policy developments, I present four major lines of thinking for reconsidering business accountability in the Anthropocene context: to rethink the purpose of business; to acknowledge companies' expanded but shared accountability for productive activities; to heighten collective and individual liability for past and future actions linked to overshooting planetary boundaries; and to recognize business accountability for influencing political and societal processes. Each of these lines of thinking imply policy changes related to, inter alia, corporate governance, due diligence, liability, and lobbying laws. I further call on businesses to actively participate in the large-scale transformation necessary to keep within planetary boundaries by changing not only their production processes, but also product portfolios, business models, legal forms, and political and societal engagement; and highlight avenues for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"33 6","pages":"615-630"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2081","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135818275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As energy systems become ever more closely intertwined in order to enable electrification and real-time coordination across sectors, tracking the nature of change to ensure accountability during complex implementation processes presents novel challenges and requires renewed thinking on data infrastructures. For instance, sectors like electricity generation, electricity distribution and electrified urban transport have begun to interact more closely and with more spatial complexity than ever before. Correspondingly, this conceptual article articulates the evolving relationship between cross-sectoral metrics (CSM) and twin transitions (i.e., digitalisation and decarbonisation) of energy systems in the Anthropocene. It argues for development of explicitly cross-sectoral metrical analysis as an accountability tool for shifts to equitable, low-carbon energy systems. It draws on three pertinent fields of study—calculative logics, institutionalisation, and degrees of digitalisation—to provide the basis for a theory of transformative metrics for application to evolving energy systems. Scholarship on calculative logics offers insights on the nature of metrics, work on institutionalisation helps understand the dynamics of integrating novel metrics into evolving sociotechnical systems, and consideration of degrees of digitalisation ensures mindfulness of differences across contexts. Resulting insights can serve as diagnostic tools to inform timely monitoring and implementation of twin transitions for energy systems. Work across three distinct lines of scholarship is specified to enable conceptual development, and an empirical case study is sketched to show how to operationalise and apply an analytical framework. This delineation serves as a step towards a theory of transformative metrics, for integrative study of CSM for accountable twin transitions.
{"title":"Cross-sectoral metrics as accountability tools for twin transitioning energy systems","authors":"Siddharth Sareen","doi":"10.1002/eet.2079","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2079","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As energy systems become ever more closely intertwined in order to enable electrification and real-time coordination across sectors, tracking the nature of change to ensure accountability during complex implementation processes presents novel challenges and requires renewed thinking on data infrastructures. For instance, sectors like electricity generation, electricity distribution and electrified urban transport have begun to interact more closely and with more spatial complexity than ever before. Correspondingly, this conceptual article articulates the evolving relationship between cross-sectoral metrics (CSM) and twin transitions (i.e., digitalisation and decarbonisation) of energy systems in the Anthropocene. It argues for development of explicitly cross-sectoral metrical analysis as an accountability tool for shifts to equitable, low-carbon energy systems. It draws on three pertinent fields of study—calculative logics, institutionalisation, and degrees of digitalisation—to provide the basis for a theory of transformative metrics for application to evolving energy systems. Scholarship on calculative logics offers insights on the nature of metrics, work on institutionalisation helps understand the dynamics of integrating novel metrics into evolving sociotechnical systems, and consideration of degrees of digitalisation ensures mindfulness of differences across contexts. Resulting insights can serve as diagnostic tools to inform timely monitoring and implementation of twin transitions for energy systems. Work across three distinct lines of scholarship is specified to enable conceptual development, and an empirical case study is sketched to show how to operationalise and apply an analytical framework. This delineation serves as a step towards a theory of transformative metrics, for integrative study of CSM for accountable twin transitions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"33 6","pages":"593-603"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2079","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135972638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For states with political economies largely dependent on oil and natural gas rents, there seems to be little scope for accountability practices that answer for, and curb, fossil fuel production contributing to anthropogenic climate change. Critically engaging with rentier state theory, I examine the climate change accountability of Persian Gulf petrostates according to state responsibility norms under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For both domestic and international actions undertaken by these countries, there is no meaningful climate answerability for responsible actions—that they recognise and/or commit to the phasing down of their oil and natural gas production. There are differences in their emission reduction goals, under the Paris Agreement, that map onto variations in the stability and structure of their political economies, notably between the ‘super-rentier’ states (UAE, Kuwait and Qatar) and their rentier neighbours (Saudi Arabia and Oman). However, all make ritualistic, long-term commitments to ‘clean-carbon’ (net zero-emission) futures with no plans to reduce hydrocarbon exports. I argue that international climate change obligations should include a responsibility on states to reduce GHG emissions (at source) arising from their domestic- and foreign ownership of operational oil and gas fields. State energy companies in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere are key actors in fossil fuel extraction, yet remain insulated, through their corporate identities, from state responsibility norms. Treating state ownership of fossil fuels as a legitimate target of international climate regulation would broaden state accountability for climate change harm.
{"title":"Theorising the climate change accountability of Persian Gulf petrostates","authors":"Michael Mason","doi":"10.1002/eet.2082","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eet.2082","url":null,"abstract":"<p>For states with political economies largely dependent on oil and natural gas rents, there seems to be little scope for accountability practices that answer for, and curb, fossil fuel production contributing to anthropogenic climate change. Critically engaging with rentier state theory, I examine the climate change accountability of Persian Gulf petrostates according to state responsibility norms under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For both domestic and international actions undertaken by these countries, there is no meaningful climate answerability for responsible actions—that they recognise and/or commit to the phasing down of their oil and natural gas production. There are differences in their emission reduction goals, under the Paris Agreement, that map onto variations in the stability and structure of their political economies, notably between the ‘super-rentier’ states (UAE, Kuwait and Qatar) and their rentier neighbours (Saudi Arabia and Oman). However, all make ritualistic, long-term commitments to ‘clean-carbon’ (net zero-emission) futures with no plans to reduce hydrocarbon exports. I argue that international climate change obligations should include a responsibility on states to reduce GHG emissions (at source) arising from their domestic- and foreign ownership of operational oil and gas fields. State energy companies in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere are key actors in fossil fuel extraction, yet remain insulated, through their corporate identities, from state responsibility norms. Treating state ownership of fossil fuels as a legitimate target of international climate regulation would broaden state accountability for climate change harm.</p>","PeriodicalId":47396,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Policy and Governance","volume":"33 6","pages":"631-640"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.2082","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135320870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}