The winds of change: How wind firms assess Germany's energy transition

Stegen, Karen Smith; Seel, Matthias

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2013.06.130

Cited by 38 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Fossil power plants typically have a lifetime of several decades, and in the Netherlands several new fossil power plants have been built in the 90s (Graus and Worrell, 2009). This makes the Dutch energy transition substantially different from the transitions in countries that either do not currently have a large number of fossil power plants such as Denmark (Lund and Mathiesen, 2009), or countries that explicitly chose to close down nuclear power plants because of safety reasons such as Germany (Smith Stegen and Seel, 2013). If the Dutch energy transition objectives are to be met this asks not just for building renewable energy production capacity in addition to fossil capacity, but this asks for the replacement of fossil production capacity by renewable energy production capacity.…”

Section: Intervene To Provide Incumbents With a Realistic Exit Strategymentioning

confidence: 96%

Sustainability transition dynamics: Towards overcoming policy resistance

Gooyert

Rouwette

Kranenburg

et al. 2016

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

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a b s t r a c t Sustainability transitions receive major scholarly attention, often explicitly with the intention to develop policy recommendations aimed towards progressing such transitions. Despite these efforts, many implemented transition policies have not been able to meet expectations. This tendency of systems to defeat the policies that have been designed to improve them is known as 'policy resistance'. This paper addresses the question how we can explain the persistence of policy resistance in the context of sustainability transitions, and aims to bring us a step further in the direction of identifying policies that support overcoming policy resistance. System dynamics is an approach that explicitly addresses policy resistance and we investigate how this approach complements existing transition approaches. As an illustration, we apply the approach to the case of the Dutch energy transition, with the participation of 96 experts. We conclude that system dynamics complements the dominant multi-level perspective and the transition management approach by providing a middle ground between emphasizing agency or structure. Moreover, the approach helps overcoming policy resistance by mapping out the structure of the system responsible for policy resistance, thereby enabling the identification of high leverage points that support sustainability transitions.

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Section: Intervene To Provide Incumbents With a Realistic Exit Strategymentioning

confidence: 96%

Sustainability transition dynamics: Towards overcoming policy resistance

Gooyert

Rouwette

Kranenburg

et al. 2016

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

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“…Much has been written regarding the range of potential implications and challenges concerning the German Energiewende (Bruninx, Madzharov, Delarue, & D'haeseleer, 2013;Griffin, Buisson, Criqui, & Mima, 2013;Huenteler, Schmidt, & Kanie, 2012;Smith Stegen & Seel, 2013). Similarly, the UK's nuclear policy has been scrutinized mainly in terms of the potential difficulties that aiming to construct 16GW of nuclear power in a liberalised energy market presents (Harris, Heptonstall, Gross, & Handley, 2013;Linares & Conchado, 2013).…”

Section: Case Study Background: Nuclear Power In the Uk And Germanymentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Nuclear Power Trajectories in Germany and the UK: From 'Regimes' to 'Democracies' in Sociotechnical Transitions and Discontinuities

Johnstone

Stirling

2015

SSRN Journal

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SWPS 2015-18 ( June) DisclaimerThe works available here are the responsibility of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of other SPRU researchers. As matters of policy and practice, SPRU does not endorse individual research contributions. Guidelines for authorsPapers shall be submitted in pdf or Word format. They should contain a title, an abstract, and keywords. Papers should be submitted to one of the Editors, who will process them and send them to the appropriate Associate Editor. Two members of SPRU will be asked to provide a short written review within three weeks. The revised versions of the paper, together with a reply to the reviewers, should be sent to the Associate Editor, who will propose to the Editors its publication on the series. When submitting the authors should indicate if the paper has already undergone peer-reviewing, in which case the Associate Editors may decide to skip internal review process. AbstractThis paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a 'nuclear renaissance', promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe. Here, this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of 'sustainability transitions'. To this end, an 'abductive' approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are 'internal' and 'external' to the 'focal regime configuration' of nuclear power and associated 'challenger technologies' like renewables. It is 'internal' criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with 'external' criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. 'Internal' criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany -the reverse of what is occurring. 'External' criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics -especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader 'qualities of democracy'. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes 'democracy', a rich political science literature on t...

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“…Moreover, rather than assuming that socio‐technical regimes are stable and resistant to change, we follow Verbong and Loorbach () in recognizing the need to understand how dominant regimes adapt in the face of niche innovations or shifting social and political conditions. The multi‐level perspective allows an appreciation of the complexity of change, including the role of different actors in a transition (Meadowcroft, ), policy mechanisms (Alkemade et al , ), market design and incentives (Smith Stegen and Seel, ) and potential barriers (Steinhilber et al , ). Despite this, our understanding of ongoing transition processes is still rather weak (Späth and Rohracher, ), and approaches have been criticized for lack of attention to agency, power and politics (Shove and Walker, ), and paying insufficient attention to ‘social innovation’ (Seyfang and Haxeltine, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting Community Renewable Energy in a Corporate Energy World

Strachan

Cowell

Ellis

et al. 2015

Sustainable Development

118

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Small‐scale, decentralized and community‐owned renewable energy is widely acknowledged to be a desirable feature of low carbon futures, but faces a range of challenges in the context of conventional, centralized energy systems. This paper draws on transition frameworks to investigate why the UK has been an inhospitable context for community‐owned renewables and assesses whether anything fundamental is changing in this regard. We give particular attention to whether political devolution, the creation of elected governments for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, has affected the trajectory of community renewables. Our analysis notes that devolution has increased political attention to community renewables, including new policy targets and support schemes. However, these initiatives are arguably less important than the persistence of key features of socio‐technical regimes: market support systems for renewable energy and land‐use planning arrangements that systemically favour major projects and large corporations, and keep community renewables to the margins. There is scope for rolling out hybrid pathways to community renewables, via joint ownership or through community benefit funds, but this still positions community energy as an adjunct to energy pathways dominated by large, corporate generation facilities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

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The winds of change: How wind firms assess Germany's energy transition

Cited by 38 publications

References 6 publications

Sustainability transition dynamics: Towards overcoming policy resistance

Sustainability transition dynamics: Towards overcoming policy resistance

Comparing Nuclear Power Trajectories in Germany and the UK: From 'Regimes' to 'Democracies' in Sociotechnical Transitions and Discontinuities

Promoting Community Renewable Energy in a Corporate Energy World

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