Conceptualising the Energy Constitution: Lessons from Northern Ireland

Abstract

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.

Post‐COVID ‐19 and globalization of oil and natural gas trade: Challenges, opportunities, lessons, regulations, and strategies

“…The pre‐investment stage is the stage in which capital inflows and investment are raised, but the post‐investment stage is the stage in which the risk is raised, and the investor becomes vulnerable to the national policies of the host country. In general, the pre‐investment phase is distinguished by soft low or voluntary and friendly rules with a series of commitments to encourage investment and stabilize and provide a set of favorable, fair, and transparent conditions to investors in other ECT countries 70 . Besides, there are weak commitments in applying national behavior principles and a well‐to‐do government and having fair and equal treatment of investors.…”

“…In general, the pre-investment phase is distinguished by soft low or voluntary and friendly rules with a series of commitments to encourage investment and stabilize and provide a set of favorable, fair, and transparent conditions to investors in other ECT countries. 70 Besides, there are weak commitments in applying national behavior principles and a well-to-do government and having fair and equal treatment of investors. In traditional oil and gas trade treaties, the opposite is done, and it is necessary to observe the principle of national behavior toward the establishment of the implementation and the elimination of investors' investments.…”

Understanding policy divergence after United Kingdom devolution: Strategic action fields in Scottish energy efficiency policy

“…Devolved policy making is hence situated in complex, inter-locking formal devolved and reserved powers. UK devolution is considered particularly permissive of policy variation, because of both the varied structural arrangements between devolved and central governments, and the provision of block grant funding to devolved governments without stringent ties to UK-wide objectives [4,5,6]. Interrelationships between political devolution and policy divergence are however by no means linear or straightforwardly predictable.…”

“…Research on inter-connections between political governance of policy and energy systems is also limited, often forming part of the background rather than foreground of energy transitions research (see systematic review [12]). Where such research has been done, it has rarely analysed policy divergence or policy learning in devolved states [13], although a few studies are now emerging [14,15,16,17,5]. In addition, the balance of transitions research has been towards supply rather than energy use, where a prominent aspect is energy used for heating buildings.…”

“…They describe the social networks and the EU, UK and Welsh Government funding streams assembled to achieve a distinctive regional innovation [17], showing the centrality of cross-sector governance. In the related area of fuel poverty, Muinzer [5] analyses policy in Northern Ireland, focusing on formal legal and regulatory institutions which comprise a complex UK energy constitution, but he does not directly address the politically-contingent dynamics of policy making. This paper hence aims to make two main contributions to the emerging field of research on energy policy governance.…”