Fragmented Energy Governance and the Provision of Global Public Goods

Abstract

This article analyses global energy governance from an international political economy and global public goods (GPG) perspective. It first describes the fragmentation that characterises energy governance and its current trend towards an increasingly inter‐polar and polycentric pattern. Then, it shows how the myriad of dedicated international energy regimes conform to an energy regime complex that provides a diverse set of GPG rather than a single international energy regime. Then, global energy governance is analysed from a global public good angle, (1) categorizing the different institutional energy‐related arrangements according to the public good they intend to provide; and (2) highlighting that the supply of such institutional arrangements is greatly influenced by the different provision technologies that are applied to the different energy‐related global public goods.

Mapping the Institutional Complex of the Climate-Energy Nexus

“…The database on climate governance builds on previous case studies ( particularly Hoffmann 2011;Bulkeley et al 2014;Hale and Roger 2014) and a thorough assessment of two online databases: the Climate Initiative Platform (climateinitiativesplatform.org) and the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA, climateaction.unfccc.int). Similarly, the dataset on global energy governance includes previous mapping exercises (Suding and Lempp 2007;Kerebel and Keppler 2009;Lesage, Van de Graaf, and Westphal 2010;Colgan, Keohane, and Van de Graaf 2012;Sovacool and Florini 2012;Escribano 2015;Wilson 2015), complemented with data from the Climate Initiatives Platform, NAZCA, and the Portal on Cooperative Initiatives (unfccc.int/focus/mitigation/items/7785. php).…”

“…Similarly, global energy governance has been characterized as fragmented (e.g. Dubash and Florini 2011;Van de Graaf 2013;Escribano 2015), partly due to the diversity of governance efforts involved and the way it deals with different energy sources (e.g. coal, gas, solar, and wind), and challenges (energy security, energy access and environmental sustainability).…”

“…Similarly, a growing body of literature has mapped the global energy complex (e.g. Suding and Lempp 2007;Kerebel and Keppler 2009;Lesage et al 2010;Colgan et al 2012;Sovacool and Florini 2012;Leal-Arcas and Filis 2013;Wilson 2015;Escribano 2015). However, these mappings led to strikingly different results, with the number of governance efforts ranging from six, identified by Kerebel and Keppler (2009), to fifty, identified by Sovacool and Florini (2012) (Van de Graaf and Colgan 2016).…”

Understanding the Energy System of the Paulista Macrometropolis: first step in local action toward climate change

“…According to some scholars, the problem is worsened by the institutional architecture of the global energy governance, which remains highly fragmented and ill-equipped to effectively address the polycentrism inherent of the field (ESCRIBANO, 2015). This lack of effective governance is associated with a variety of interconnected and highly complex problems, such as the need for energy security, access to different energy sources, and the negative environmental and climatic externalities created by the extraction, production, transportation, and consumption of energy (HEUBAUM; BIERMANN, 2015).…”