Sub-National Government and Pathways to Sustainable Energy
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This publication is distributed under a CC ____________ license. ____________________________________________________ Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space Sub -national government and pathways to sustainable energy Journal:For Environment Review and Planning C: PoliticsOnly and Space Manuscript ID Draft Manuscript Type: Article energy, devolution, environmental governance, multiscalar governance, Keywords: environmental sustainability In an effort to understand how to promote more sustainable forms of energy provision, researchers have begun addressing the scale of political and governance processes, yet the effects of sub-national government remain neglected. At the same time, analysts of political devolution, decentralisation and independence have rarely given attention to the energy sector. Papers in this special issue seek to better understand the relationship between sub-national government and pathways to sustainable energy: examining how city-regional and devolved governments have shaped agendas for building retrofit; elucidating the importance of reflexive, decentralised governance in knitting together electricity, heat Abstract: and transport energy markets; mapping the complex, fuzzy spatial organisation of legal powers to direct energy policy across multi-level polities; and analysing conflicts over the allocation of energy infrastructure consenting powers between national and devolved governments. The papers highlight the interdependencies of action in different governmental arenas, and reinforce arguments for greater central-to-local reflexivity in governance styles. Analysing the interface between sub-national government and energy transition also raises new questions about the meaning of ‘sovereignty’, the fragmentary nature of democratic control over energy systems, and the effects of boundaries. https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/epc-pion Page 1 of 19 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 1 2 3 4 Sub-national government and pathways to 5 6 sustainable energy 7 8 9 10 Introduction to a Special Issue of Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 For Review Only 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 1 https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/epc-pion Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space Page 2 of 19 1 2 3 Abstract 4 5 In an effort to understand how to promote more sustainable forms of energy provision, 6 researchers have begun addressing the scale of political and governance processes, yet the 7 effects of sub-national government remain neglected. At the same time, analysts of political 8 9 devolution, decentralisation and independence have rarely given attention to the energy 10 sector. Papers in this special issue seek to better understand the relationship between sub- 11 national government and pathways to sustainable energy: examining how city-regional and 12 devolved governments have shaped agendas for building retrofit; elucidating the importance 13 of reflexive, decentralised governance in knitting together electricity, heat and transport 14 energy markets; mapping the complex, fuzzy spatial organisation of legal powers to direct 15 energy policy across multi-level polities; and analysing conflicts over the allocation of energy 16 infrastructure consenting powers between national and devolved governments. The papers 17 highlight the interdependencies of action in different governmental arenas, and reinforce 18 For Review Only 19 arguments for greater central-to-local reflexivity in governance styles. Analysing the 20 interface between sub-national government and energy transition also raises new questions 21 about the meaning of ‘sovereignty’, the fragmentary nature of democratic control over energy 22 systems, and the effects of boundaries. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 2 https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/epc-pion Page 3 of 19 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 1 2 3 1.0 Introduction 4 5 Around the globe, from international institutions to local municipalities, there is a broad 6 chorus of support for making our systems of energy provision more environmentally 7 sustainable, secure and just. Listening more closely to this chorus reveals the immensity of 8 the challenge. Rather than a single route towards more sustainable energy futures there are 9 10 multiple possibilities: some entailing incremental adjustments of incumbent systems of 11 provision, others involving radical change (Verbong and Loorbach 2012; Foxon 2013).All 12 choices have distinct distributive effects and are likely to be contested. Given the stakes, the 13 challenges of energy transition raise questions about politics and governance (Meadowcroft 14 2009): who should decide what to do, on what basis, for which political community and how 15 can policies be effectively implemented? 16 17 Politics and governance are aspects of energy transition acknowledged to require more 18 researcher attentionFor (Cox et al 2016),Review and the scale at which Only political and governance 19 20 processes are organised is an important dimension (Bridge et al 2013; Sovacool and Brown 21 2009). To adapt a geographical aphorism, the transition to more sustainable energy systems 22 will not occur on the head of a pin, but across complex terrains of physical infrastructures, 23 consumption behaviours and environmental and resource ecologies, and it will be driven by 24 pressures from market interactions, government interventions and social practices that 25 emanate from different places and operate at different scales. This creates a difficult setting 26 for the deliberate orchestration of change and a challenging context for understanding the 27 causal effects of governmental action. 28 29 30 This challenge is not simply one of understanding how energy transitions intersect with 31 multiple levels of government: in numerous spheres the spatial arrangements of political and 32 governance processes are themselves in flux. Familiar processes of localisation, 33 Europeanisation or internationalisation face trends pushing change in other directions. 34 Devolution within the UK is changing its constitutional structure, for which the 2014 Scottish 35 independence referendum is just one of the more dramatic episodes. The UK’s EU 36 membership referendum of 2016 and ensuing moves for ‘Brexit’ have potentially profound 37 implications inter alia for supra-national governing and market institutions, as well as 38 unsettling the UK’s ‘internal’ territorial constitution. It is timely therefore to examine how the 39 40 shifting scalar structures of governance – their changing territorial reach, the distribution of 41 power between tiers - intersect with the evolving spatiality of energy provision, and how 42 together they shape future energy pathways. 43 44 To address these concerns, this themed issue of Environment and Planning C: Politics and 45 Space focuses on sub-national government. This has been characterised by Marks et al (2008, 46 113) as a ‘coherent territorial entity situated between local and national levels with a capacity 47 for authoritative decision-making’ and remains neglected in research on sustainability in 48 general (Bruyninckx et al 2012; Raven et al 2012), and energy in particular. This is an 49 50 unfortunate omission, as sub-national government has numerous potentially important roles 51 in shaping energy transitions: as an originator of innovations, a vehicle for addressing and 52 channelling social disaffections arising from specific localities, and a resister, mediator 53 and/or implementer of wider national or corporate agendas. 54 55 Examining the connections between energy, transition and sub-national government enables 56 insights to be drawn in a number of directions. Firstly, because of the location of sub-national 57 government ‘between’ other arenas (local, national, and supra-national) in multi-level 58 59 60 3 https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/epc-pion Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space Page 4 of 19 1 2 3 government systems, it provides a useful vantage point for de-centred accounts of energy 4 transitions, looking beyond central government. It offers great potential for understanding the 5 conditions under which change emerges (Murphy and Smith 2013) but also – and equally 6 important – identifying how dominant energy systems (incumbent actors, technologies, 7 markets, social practices and other institution norms) come to persist, despite the need to 8 9 navigate changes