The Clean Energy Ministerial: Motivation for and policy consequences of membership

Abstract

What motivated national governments to join the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), a climate club founded in 2010? And to what extent have the club members participated in policy initiatives developed by the CEM? Our analysis shows that combinations of (a) the expected benefits of club membership and (b) the leadership of the USA induced the governments of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to join the CEM. The importance of these two factors varied across countries. Participation levels in the CEM’s policy initiatives varied over time. While this variation happened in a ‘proportionate’ manner for Australia, Canada and China, we observed singular instances of ‘disproportionate’ changes in levels of policy effort for the UAE and Brazil. Overall, our findings suggest that climate clubs constrain the behaviour of its members by discouraging them from engaging in sustained policy under-reactions.

The politics of climate change in a neo-developmental state: The case of South Korea

“…The green growth initiative was important because for the first time environmental concerns became a focus of policymaking. Moreover, Lee used the international negotiations highlighted in the Copenhagen Accord of 2009 to formulate the first-ever Korean goals for emission reductions (for other examples of the integration of international and domestic factors in climate policies, see Tosun and Rinscheid, 2019). The government announced a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below business as usual (BAU) by 2020, which would have meant an increase of 80% over 1990 levels and a reduction of 19% compared to 2010.…”

National interests and coalition positions on climate change: A text-based analysis

“…This core group includes China and India, the two largest greenhouse gas emitters among the developing countries, along with oil-dependent economies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and Venezuela (also, Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait participate often in LMDC submissions). While China has embraced clean energy as a win-win solution for addressing climate change, strengthening its industrial base and tackling local air pollution (Tosun and Rinscheid, n.d. ), India’s widespread poverty and low per capita emissions have led her to consistently reject responsibility for climate change mitigation (Jaeger and Michaelowa, 2016).…”

“…This article thus aims at improving our knowledge about the connections between domestic climate politics and the international level, by analyzing the extent to which coalitions are able to represent the priorities and preferences of their members, and discussing whether this contributes to disproportionate policy responses at the international level. It is conceived as a complementary piece to Tosun and Rinscheid (n.d.), who explore the ways in which domestic and international factors affect countries’ decisions to participate in international initiatives on climate change.…”

The politics of climate change: Domestic and international responses to a global challenge

“…As we can see in Figure 1, Saudi Arabia has a much higher – albeit, in comparison with other countries, low – score regarding its national climate policies relative to the international climate policies adopted, which explains the size of the residual for this particular observation in Figure 2. The opposite holds true for Canada, for instance, which demonstrates a better international than national performance in climate policy (see also, e.g., Tosun and Rinscheid, 2020). The authors of the Climate Performance Index note for Canada that there is an ‘increased gap between policy directions at federal and provincial levels, leading to a low rating for national climate policy’ (Bruck et al, 2018: 20).…”

“…Fourth, Maor et al (2017b) acknowledge that domestic politics is affected by the international level and therefore argue that, considering the inevitability of climate change, national governments might overreact in order to establish domestic climate policies that put other countries under pressure, giving them a strategic advantage in international climate politics. For example, Germany has been known as a ‘climate leader’ that strives to upscale its ambitious policies to the European and then to the international level (Tobin, 2017), including for strategic reasons, such as the creation of an international market for clean energy technologies (see also Tosun and Rinscheid, 2020).…”