Applying institutional theory to the analysis of energy transitions: From local agency to multi-scale configurations in Australia and Germany

Jehling, Mathias; Hitzeroth, Marion; Brueckner, Martin

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2019.01.018

Cited by 44 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…Improving community infrastructure and economic conditions, reducing external intervention on community affairs, and cultivating social capital stock are important approaches to enhancing public participation in environmental governance Ref. [27] Energy transitions in Australia and Germany Multi-Level-Perspective framework Institutional factors: rules, practices, and narratives in national, state, and local scales The inclusion of modes and scales in institutional frameworks helps to nuance and refine comparative research on energy transitions…”

Section: Topic Institutional Theory and Factor Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Straw-Based Biomass Power Generation in Rural Area in Northeast China—An Institutional Analysis Grounded in a Risk Management Perspective

Wang

Watanabe

2020

Sustainability

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Given a lack of consideration for the role and importance of stakeholders and the importance of stakeholders in the operation of biomass power plants in China, a comprehensive analysis oriented toward stakeholder risk management is needed to further develop the country’s biomass energy industry. Accordingly, we analyzed institutional factors that contribute to or constrain progress in biomass power generation in China. Data were collected from 275 straw suppliers (farmers) living around a biomass power plant, 15 middlemen, five power plant managers, and five local government officers. Interviews were held with all the participants, but questionnaires were additionally administered to the straw suppliers. Results showed that: (1) risk transfer in the biomass supply chain is one of the reasons why farmers are unwilling to supply straw; (2) middlemen are vital intermediaries between biomass power plant managers and farmers as a middleman-based biomass supply system is necessary to guarantee the quantity of straw supply, and; (3) the institutional structure that underlies the Chinese biomass energy industry is immature.

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Section: Topic Institutional Theory and Factor Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Straw-Based Biomass Power Generation in Rural Area in Northeast China—An Institutional Analysis Grounded in a Risk Management Perspective

Wang

Watanabe

2020

Sustainability

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“…The importance of regional and sub-national governments in developing RE policies has been highlighted in the recent RE transitions literature (Bradshaw and de Martino Jannuzzi, 2019;Jehling et al, 2019). This recent work emphasises how actors can purposively seek to change the institutional settings to create space for RE and how a multi-level governance approach can highlight instances where regions and subnational governments have exercised wider authority and autonomy in order to increase RE uptake.…”

Section: Discussion 2: Policy Insights For Regional Renewable Energy mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While research has highlighted the central role of institutional variations as foundations for geographical differences in the adoption of RE (Moss et al, 2015;De Laurentis, forthcoming;Wirth, 2014;Jehling et al, 2019;Hansen and Coenen, 2015), the approached used here allows us to focus on the institutions-the 'formal regulations, legislation and economic systems as well as informal societal norms that regulate the behaviour of economic actors' (Gertler, 2004: 7)-that matter for RE and the varied effects that they can exert on regional RE deployment. The regional lens is also useful as it enable us to explore the relationship between different scales of governance of energy infrastructure and network development and how they can contribute to reshaping energy landscapes locally (cf Addie et al, 2020).…”

Section: The Analytical Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy insights for regional renewable energy deployment

Laurentis¹,

Pearson²

2020

Preprint

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Background The paper explores how regional actors engage with energy systems, flows and infrastructures in order to meet particular goals and offers a fine-tuned analysis of how differences arise, highlighting the policy-relevant insights that emerge. Methods Using a novel framework, the research performs a comparative case study analysis of three regions in Italy and two of the devolved territories of the UK, Wales and Scotland, drawing on interviews and documentary analysis.Results The paper shows that the socio-materialities of renewable energy enable a fine-tuned analysis of how institutions, governance and infrastructure can enable/constrain energy transitions and policy effectiveness at local and regional levels. The heuristic adopted highlights i) the institutions that matter for renewable energy and their varied effects on regional renewable energy deployment; ii) the range of agencies involved in strategically establishing, contesting and reproducing institutions, expectations, visions and infrastructure as renewable energy deployment unfolds at the regional level and iii) the nature and extent of infrastructure requirements for and constraints on renewable energy delivery and how they affect the regional capacity to shape infrastructure networks and facilitate renewable energy deployment. The paper shows how the regions investigated developed their institutional and governance capacity and made use of targets, energy visions and spatial planning to promote renewable energy deployment. The paper highlights that several mediating factors emerge from examining the interactions between regional physical resource endowments and energy infrastructure renewal. The analysis leads to several policy-relevant insights into what makes for renewable energy deployment. Conclusion The paper contributes to research that highlights the role of institutional variations and governance as foundations for geographical differences in the adoption of renewable energy and carries significant implications for policy thinking and implementation. It shows why and how policy-makers need to be more effective in balancing the range of goals/ interests for renewable energy deployment with the peculiarities and specificities of the regional contexts. The insights presented are useful to explain how energy choices and outcomes are shaped in particular places, how differences arise and operate in practice, and how they need to be taken into account in policy design and implementation.

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“…However, it is not a proof of causality, since we only consider the outcome (urban form) and not the processes of the policy instruments in a model, as for example Verstegen et al (2016) show. Taken the complexity of the application of instruments and the challenges to infer causal relations, we argue that further research should address actors' agency and interests empirically (Jehling et al, 2019). This should also be sustained by a more elaborated theoretical framework (Rohlfing, 2012).…”

Section: Reflections On the Approachmentioning

confidence: 95%

Do land policies make a difference? A data-driven approach to trace effects on urban form in France and Germany

Jehling

Hecht

2021

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

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Against the backdrop of rapidly expanding urban structures, land policies in many countries have been adapted to contain and redirect growth to existing urban structures. However, obstacles remain to measure the effects of policies. In the meantime, geoinformation technologies have given rise to a wide range of approaches to measure and describe urban form. Nevertheless, its application for the assessment of land policy has a high, but not yet fully exploited, potential. It is thus the aim of this research to address and investigate the options of spatial analysis and machine learning in particular to analyse urban form from a land policy perspective. To do so, we develop urban metrics informed by urban planning and land readjustment policies of two countries describing urban form on different spatial levels. We therefore formulate hypotheses on causal relations between policy and form. Based on the metrics, we apply the random forest algorithm to classify the building stock of the region. We then extract the residential areas, those with single-family houses, as this is where the effects of the policy are considered most visible. In a next step, we use random forest to predict the nationality of a building. Through variable importance measures, we identify and discuss urban morphological differences between the two countries and test the hypotheses on effects of land policies. We develop and test the approach for the French-German city-region of Strasbourg using OpenStreetMap data. We identify significant differences in the building coverage ratios, which tend to be higher in Germany. This can be linked to differences in planning regulations. Furthermore, German residential areas appear to be more diverse in urban form. Differences in land readjustment policies have proven to be plausible here, as French policies favour strong actors that develop residential areas more uniformly. In Germany, policies favour fragmented ownership-oriented development of residential areas. The metrics and the applied algorithm for building classification have proven to be robust in terms of data heterogeneity and have shown high levels of accuracy. They could also be successfully used for tracing causal relations.

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Applying institutional theory to the analysis of energy transitions: From local agency to multi-scale configurations in Australia and Germany

Cited by 44 publications

References 37 publications

The Development of Straw-Based Biomass Power Generation in Rural Area in Northeast China—An Institutional Analysis Grounded in a Risk Management Perspective

The Development of Straw-Based Biomass Power Generation in Rural Area in Northeast China—An Institutional Analysis Grounded in a Risk Management Perspective

Policy insights for regional renewable energy deployment

Do land policies make a difference? A data-driven approach to trace effects on urban form in France and Germany

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