Household Costs and Resistance to Germany's Energy Transition

Karapin, Roger

doi:10.1111/ropr.12371

Cited by 9 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The government of North Rhine‐Westphalia, acting to protect coal interests in the state, followed suit with its own distance requirements in spring 2018 (Knight, 2018). Other critics raised concerns over the uneven socioeconomic benefits of the localized energy transition, discussed by Roger Karapin (2020). The European Commission pressured Germany to phase out the FIT in favor of competitive tenders for new projects (Lauber & Jacobsson, 2016).…”

Section: The German Energy Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unresolved problems with grid technology provided an opening for incumbent energy players to reposition themselves in both countries. In Germany, these problems were amplified by arguments about socioeconomic justice (Bruns, Futterlieb, Ohlhorst, & Wenzel, 2014; Karapin, 2020; Paulos, 2014) and local conflicts over energy installations versus landscapes (Schreurs & Ohlhorst, 2015; Stellmach, 2016). The Conservative‐led coalition in the federal parliament, the Economics Ministry, and the reconfigured incumbent utilities helped craft revisions to the national energy law that curtailed the expansion of the most popular forms of local investment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local Renewable Energy Initiatives in Germany and Japan in a Changing National Policy Environment

Hager

Hamagami

2020

Review of Policy Research

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Our article explores the contribution of local initiatives to the creation of path dependencies for energy transition in Germany and Japan in the face of resistance from entrenched incumbents at the national level. We use a process-tracing methodology based partly on interviews with local participants. In particular, we explore the role of local initiatives in securing "socio-political space" for the expansion of renewable energy and in embedding themselves in "ecosystems" of public and private institutions. German energy activists were more successful than their Japanese counterparts in expanding this space and creating positive feedbacks in part because they were able to build horizontal networks that anchored the energy transition firmly in local communities. Although problems with grid technology have led to retrenchment in both cases, Japanese activists' reliance on vertical networks has limited their ability to weather a backlash from national government and utility actors. Our study demonstrates the interaction of political, economic/technological, and legitimation paths to energy transition and highlights the importance of the latter two.

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Section: The German Energy Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local Renewable Energy Initiatives in Germany and Japan in a Changing National Policy Environment

Hager

Hamagami

2020

Review of Policy Research

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“…In this case, focusing on the institutions and actors of the political path appears more fruitful. Even smaller political changes have the potential to achieve far-reaching results, such as the Energiewende in Germany in 1990 (Karapin, 2020;Stefes, 2020) and, as Dermont and Kammermann show, the nuclear phaseout in Switzerland, which inevitably changes the economic-technological path of this Alpine republic.…”

Section: Resistance To Energy Transitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In his study of Germany’s energy transition, Roger Karapin (2020) provides a good example of negative and positive feedback loops between the institutions that shape the developments of the three meso paths. With the passage of the first major pro‐renewable energy legislation at the federal level in 1990, Germany’s energy transition took off at a rapid pace for more than 20 years.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Resistance to Energy Transitions

Stefes

Hager

2020

Review of Policy Research

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marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Billed as a nationwide teach-in, the first Earth Day in 1970 attracted some 20 million participants and ushered in a period of groundbreaking environmental legislation in much of the industrialized world. The following decades saw the creation of a global climate regime, culminating in the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2016, which aims to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This year, an estimated one billion people in 192 countries took part in Earth Day activities. Yet, while the mood at the first Earth Day was hopeful, this one took place in an atmosphere of impending catastrophe. From melting polar ice caps to record-setting wildfires to locust infestations, the global effects of climate change are accelerating at an alarming rate. As the ravages of climate change become unmistakable, climate action is not accelerating apace. The Paris targets can only be met by steeply and rapidly reducing carbon emissions. This will require a global transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy sources within the next several decades. The enormous cost of climate inaction is becoming clear to polities all over the world. At the same time, the costs of renewable energy production have plummeted to the point where renewables are competitive with all other energy sources. The political commitment to energy transition, along with the economic arguments in its favor, should result in rapid uptake of renewable energies. Instead, were it not for the global industrial slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the key players would fail to meet their 2020 targets. The United States has announced its withdrawal from the climate regime altogether. The resolve of 2016 has melted into disarray. A rapid energy transition is not a foregone conclusion anywhere in the world. This special issue addresses domestic constraints on climate action. Specifically, we look at resistance to energy transitions. We take as our starting point the fact that major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, even the ones advocating most strongly for global climate action, have faced formidable domestic hurdles to meeting their own commitments. Our goal is to help explain why politics is not keeping up with scientific knowledge or technological developments. Incumbent industries that stand to lose from a rapid transition to renewable energy command considerable political resources. Citizens living close to wind parks express health concerns. Environmentalists face trade-offs between climate protection and landscape and wildlife preservation. Consumers fear rising energy prices. The articles in this special issue analyze the emerging, multifaceted resistance to energy transitions in a variety of political settings. All of our case studies focus on industrialized democracies, including three of

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“…They have not been integrated into explaining the power mechanisms on policy mix adoption. In this regard, significant gaps in explaining power dynamics, analyzing the role of power, mainly influencing the policy mix development and policy experimentation, have remained [3,4,8]. Several questions are left open, including:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influential Mechanisms of Power Actor Groups on Policy Mix Adoption: Lessons Learned from Feed-In Tariffs in the Renewable Energy Transition in Iran and Germany

Mohammadi

Khabbazan

2022

Sustainability

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The Energy transition is fiercely competitive. The incumbents of fossil-based energy are in conflict with the advocate coalitions of transition in energy policy changes. Such changes do not occur as sudden punctuation via an external shock, but rather incrementally and over time, by incorporating power insights such as lobbies, coalitions, and campaigns. This article provides a framework grounded in theoretical power theories and draws additional insights from policy mix studies. It investigates how focusing events and feedback loops shape the coalition of interest groups in policymaking through implementations of power mechanisms. Our framework is tested through two different power stories of energy transition in Iran and Germany. Our findings reveal that the centrally planned economy of Iran leaves society with a negligible or passive role in the energy transition. The passive role of society in the energy transition is mainly caused by subsidizing energy. In addition, the financial and economic crisis resulting from other macro-economic challenges, such as sanctions, may exacerbate the minor involvement of civil society in the slow expansion of renewables in Iran. By contrast, as a robust economy with a corporatist tradition, Germany has made a strong advocacy coalition of energy transition that resulted in political incentives for substantial renewable energy deployment. Regarding the theoretical question of the power dynamics in divergent countries’ energy transitions, the proposed framework based on the interest group coalitions and power mechanism offers an understanding of the social character of energy transitions.

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Household Costs and Resistance to Germany's Energy Transition

Cited by 9 publications

References 37 publications

Local Renewable Energy Initiatives in Germany and Japan in a Changing National Policy Environment

Local Renewable Energy Initiatives in Germany and Japan in a Changing National Policy Environment

Resistance to Energy Transitions

The Influential Mechanisms of Power Actor Groups on Policy Mix Adoption: Lessons Learned from Feed-In Tariffs in the Renewable Energy Transition in Iran and Germany

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