The political logics of clean energy transitions

By Hanna L. Breetz, M. Mildenberger, Leah Stokes. Business and Politics, 2018

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Technology costs and deployment rates, represented in experience curves, are typically seen as the main factors in the global clean energy transition from fossil fuels towards low-carbon energy sources. We argue that politics is the hidden dimension of technology experience curves, as it affects both costs and deployment. We draw from empirical analyses of diverse North American and European cases to describe patterns of political conflict surrounding clean energy adoption across a variety of technologies. Our analysis highlights that different political logics shape costs and deployment at different stages along the experience curve. The political institutions and conditions that nurture new technologies into economic winners are not always the same conditions that let incumbent technologies become economic losers. Thus, as the scale of technology adoption moves from niches towards systems, new political coalitions are necessary to push complementary system-wide technology. Since the cost curve is integrated globally, different countries can contribute to different steps in the transition as a function of their individual comparative political advantages.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e8ce169abd82cd8431bb4f8ec9408bb0dc7f2a56

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Citations in the corpus

Fossilised Capital: Price and Profit in the Energy Transition (2021, background): “The predominant research themes have been the role of the state and of vested industry interests in enabling or frustrating the transition (e.g. Breetz et al. 2018; Newell 2019; Hochstetler 2021).”
Transition, hedge, or resist? Understanding political and economic behavior toward decarbonization in the oil and gas industry (2020, background): “Similarly, Breetz et al. (2018) demonstrate that political opposition to clean technology increases as it moves from development to deployment.”