The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: Towards a new research agenda

Roberts, Cameron; Geels, Frank W.; Lockwood, Matthew; Newell, Peter; Schmitz, Hubert; Turnheim, Bruno; Jordan, Andrew

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2018.06.001

Cited by 278 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 75 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

126

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Governing transitions by governing their expectations is all but normatively neutral. Despite their cosmopolitan and universalistic pretensions, sustainable (energy) transitions are always deeply politically and ethically-laden (Shove and Walker, 2007;Delina and Janetos, 2018;Roberts et al, 2018): they involve a plurality of ways to "frame" the transition-and coincidently, different forms of ordering and prioritizing the interests of distinct actors- (Meadowcroft, 2009) and a multiplicity of different, controversial, and sometimes incommensurable perspectives (Smith and Stirling, 2007;Delina and Janetos, 2018). Within this context, scholars have been paying increasing attention to the conditions and challenges of democratizing energy governance, especially by increasing public participation and influence in energy-related decision-making (Schaube et al, 2018;van Veelen and van der Horst, 2018).…”

Section: Participation and The Democracy Of Energy Transitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participatory Energy Transitions as Boundary Objects: The Case of Chile's Energía2050

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper analyzes the use of "participatory futures" within the context of energy transition, paying special attention to the case of Chile's long-term energy policy. Our main aim is to question the role of "participation" in such a context and particularly, to decouple the operative function of participation from its normative function. Structurally, we argue that the construction of a joint vision of desired energy futures must be understood as a deliberate attempt at governing the energy transition by way of governing the expectations of the actors and systems involved in it. Participatory approaches can promote the co-construction of such energy futures in the form of a boundary-object, able to resonate with and provide a common reference to the actors participating in its creation. On the other hand, participatory approaches can also be a way to make transitions more democratic, subjecting it to a broader influence and control from the citizenship. These two functions of "participation" are always potentially at odds with one another. Democratizing the transition, in fact, would require producing plural, dynamical imaginaries that are responsive and accountable to the public. On the contrary, the need to make transitions governable may close-up such imaginaries and narrow-down the participatory efforts to foster their normalization and acceptability on the part of the most influential actors in the self-government of the transition. To refine and exemplify our proposal, we perform a qualitative, exploratory case study of Chile's E2050 energy policy. Our findings show that "participation" may indeed have been used in the case to align partially conflicting expectations around a collectively-defined boundary object which may then act as a form of contextual, anticipatory and polycentric governance of the transition. However, from a democratic perspective, E2050 appears as a tokenization of the public in support of a pre-eminently technical and monolithic vision enacted by the Energy Ministry and the Consultative Committee. Within this context, the actual influence of the public on the policy and the possibility for political contestation are much more questionable.

show abstract

Section: Participation and The Democracy Of Energy Transitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participatory Energy Transitions as Boundary Objects: The Case of Chile's Energía2050

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to historical studies, transitions involve multiple decades of co-evolutionary changes in technology and society (see Martínez Arranz, 2017) that cannot be reduced to a single driver given the scale and scope of the systems undergoing change (Geels and Kemp, 2007). Rather, there are multiple drivers and complex feedbacks that open up transformative directions of change (Roberts et al, 2018). Take, for instance, the historical transition from horse-based transportation to gas-powered automobiles (see Geels, 2005).…”

Section: What Is a Low-carbon Transition?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Unruh (2000), the stability promoting mechanisms underlying a socio-technical system configuration can be usefully summarized in terms of: (1) the vast sunk costs associated with current technological and institutional arrangements, (2) the accumulation of experience around established technologies and institutions, (3) self-fulfilling expectations about the persistence of these arrangements, and (4) increasing benefits of moving in the established direction -e.g., standardization and access to financing. Beyond these four mechanisms, others note that specific institutional and technological arrangements tend to become accepted as natural the longer they are in place, possible alternative institutional and technological trajectories are not equally viable at any point in time, and there are often mutually reinforcing dynamics between a given institutional or technological setup and its beneficiaries -i.e., vested interests (Roberts et al, 2018;Schmidt and Sewerin, 2017). In this view, existing system configurations tend to be reproduced by a variety of interlinked social and material forces that are both structural as well as agential in nature -enmeshed, interacting, and often mutually supporting sets of rules, technologies, infrastructures, practices, ownership structures, actor networks, and many other factors (Geels et al, 2016b).…”

Section: Transition Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first engages more deeply with agency, elaborating the way in which actors interact and strategically seek to influence transition processes (Berggren et al, 2015;Geels, 2014;Hess, 2016;Ingram et al, 2015;Smink et al, 2015). The second explores complementarities among transition perspectives and political science approaches to develop more politically-informed transition studies (Cherp et al, 2018;Kern and Rogge, 2018;Roberts et al, 2018;.…”

Section: Transition Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In regard to the second strand, new research agendas have emerged which seek to unlock complementarities among transition and political science perspectives (Cherp et al, 2018;Roberts et al, 2018). Scholars have drawn on historical institutionalism (Lockwood et al, 2017), discursive institutionalism (Kern, 2012), and policy process theories (Kern and Rogge, 2018), among many other approaches, to enhance the political sensitivity of transition studies.…”

Section: Transition Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Politics of Decarbonization Pathways: Responses, Conflicts, and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Energy Future

Rosenbloom¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This thesis explores the politics of decarbonization pathways, with a particular focus on the responses to and conflicts surrounding the transition to a low-carbon energy future. As part of this, the dissertation: (1) scrutinizes how the concept of "pathways" is understood within climateenergy policy and analysis; and (2) attends to the struggles involved in pursuing potential pathways to carbon-neutral energy systems. Two overarching and interrelated research questions orient this work. First, how are pathways understood in the context of the low-carbon transition? And second, how are the socio-technical responses that help make up these pathways contested and shaped through politics? The introductory chapter of this thesis lays the groundwork for interrogating these questions, providing background on the subject of climate change, outlining the role of energy in this challenge, raising issues around the governance of low-carbon transitions, identifying research aims and questions, and discussing relevant research perspectives and approaches. Drawing on transition and discursive perspectives, chapters 2 through 4 then present three studies that take up Chapter 2-Pathways: an emerging concept for the theory and governance of low-carbon transitions

show abstract

Low‐carbon energy, sustainable development, and justice: Towards a just energy transition for the society and the environment

Siciliano

Wallbott

Urban

et al. 2021

Sustainable Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Governments and civil society are increasingly aware that the decarbonization of energy systems needs to be aligned with justice principles of recognition, distribution, and process. This paper establishes a conceptual linkage between "sustainable development", "low-carbon energy transitions" and "energy justice" and examines social priorities to address peoples' competing priorities associated with low-carbon energy interventions. By analyzing a renewable energy project in Vietnam as a case study, the paper shows that linking social priorities to energy justice provides a useful contribution for energy policy makers toward a better understanding of the multidimensional and complex aspects of low-carbon energy transitions, and how different segments of society prioritize and perceive them for the achievement of socially just energy decisions.

show abstract

The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: Towards a new research agenda

Abstract: Andy (2018) The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: towards a new research agenda. Energy Research and Social Science, 44. pp. 304-311.

Cited by 278 publications

References 75 publications

Participatory Energy Transitions as Boundary Objects: The Case of Chile's Energía2050

Participatory Energy Transitions as Boundary Objects: The Case of Chile's Energía2050

The Politics of Decarbonization Pathways: Responses, Conflicts, and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Energy Future

Low‐carbon energy, sustainable development, and justice: Towards a just energy transition for the society and the environment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About