David Toke

Wind Power in UK and Denmark: Can Rational Choice Help Explain Different Outcomes?

A rational choice framework can be deployed with effect to demonstrate how institutions can have crucial influences on behaviour through altering the incentive structures of actors. In this wind power case, institutional arrangements involving local co-operatives practised in Denmark have been associated with collective action success whilst apparently more competitive arrangements in the UK have been associated with collective action failure.

Policy networks and the GM crops issue: assessing the utility of a dialectical model of policy networks

A dialectical model of policy networks is deployed to analyse policy change in the area of GM crops in the UK. The model uses an analysis of the interaction between agents and structure, network and context and network and outcomes to understand and explain how policy change has occurred. A key advantage of the model is that it increases understanding of network transformation, explanation of which has been an alleged weakness of the policy network approach. However, this case study does throw up some weaknesses with the model, including the tendency of the model to emphasize the role of ‘insider’ agents and downplay the role of ‘outsiders’ in the policy process.

Ecological modernisation, social movements and renewable energy

Ecological modernisation (EM) theory has involved a debate about the relative importance of concentrating on incorporating technological change into mainstream industry and, on the other hand, developing ‘reflexive’ capacities for debate involving social movements (SMs). However, such discussions may obscure the need to study the involvement of SMs in the development and deployment of ‘ecological’ technologies themselves. This issue is investigated through an analysis of renewable energy, principally wind power. SM involvement in eco-technological development and implementation may be understated by EM theory.

Policy Network Creation: The Case of Energy Efficiency

What can broadly be described as a policy community has been established with the central purpose of co-ordinating policy implementation in the field of energy efficiency in domestic buildings. A complete understanding of the processes of policy network formation cannot be achieved in this case without a thorough analysis of the construction of cognitive structures which influence the behaviour of actors and underpin the policy network. Discourse analysis is an effective means of studying cognitive structures. An understanding of the creative and unpredictable role of agents such as ministers is also important, suggesting that the study of policy network formation can be enlightened by a historical institutionalist approach that involves a role for agency as well as structural influences. The formation of the energy efficiency policy network is studied in the context of a critique of an earlier ‘economic’ institutionalist case study of policy network formation.

Wind power in the UK: How planning conditions and financial arrangements affect outcomes

There is an examination of the planning and financial factors affecting outcomes of implementation of distributed generation in terms of wind turbines in the UK. On the planning side this emphasises the importance of influence of the people living nearest to the proposed windfarm. Developers can improve their chances of success by increasing public participation and local ownership of the schemes. On the financial side, the UKs version of a green certificate system is assuring onshore wind power developers achieve good rates of return. However, there are doubts whether this system is cost-effective in comparison with ‘feed-in’ tariffs, and, also, the system is failing to ensure speedy deployment of offshore windfarms.

Rescaling the Governance of Renewable Energy: Lessons from the UK Devolution Experience

Abstract Efforts to rescale governance arrangements to foster sustainable development are rarely simple in their consequences, an out-turn examined in this paper through an analysis of how the governance of renewable energy in the UK has been impacted by the devolution of power to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Theoretically, attention is given to the ways in which multiple modes of governing renewable energy, and the interactions between modes and objects of governance, together configure the scalar organization of renewable energy governance. Our findings show how the devolved governments have created new, sub-national renewable energy strategies and targets, yet their effectiveness largely depends on UK-wide systems of subsidy. Moreover, shared support for particular objects of governance—large-scale, commercial electricity generation facilities—has driven all the devolved government to centralize and expedite the issuing of consents. This leads to a wider conclusion. While the level at which environmental problems are addressed can affect how they are governed, what key actors believe about the objects of governance can mediate the effects of any rescaling processes.

Trading Schemes, Risks, and Costs: The Cases of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Renewables Obligation

The appropriateness and importance of market-based environmental governance systems vary according to different cases. Although so-called ‘market trading’ regimes can be useful in some circumstances, a false belief in the inevitability of their cost-effectiveness compared with so-called ‘command and control’ systems has allowed policy distortions to occur. So-called ‘command and control’ policies are being underemphasised, despite the fact that they may achieve reductions in carbon emissions that are cheaper than those likely to be achieved through emissions (or ‘certificate’) trading regimes. I address theoretical arguments which I then place in context with analysis of some features of the British Renewables Obligation and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme.

The relationship between climate change and energy security: key issues and conclusions

There has been considerable work on the politics of climate change and energy security as separate issues, but much less on the relationship between energy security and climate change. From studies of the relationships between these concepts in individual states and a comparison of media coverage of energy security in differing states, there appears to be little consistent connection between discourses on and policies for energy security and climate change. Climate change considerations appear to be constructed to promote elite and special-interest interpretations of energy security. It is concluded that efforts at a local, national, and global level should be oriented towards promoting climate change objectives to capture energy policy. Otherwise, nationally based conceptions of energy security are likely to predominate over climate-change objectives.

Climate change and the nuclear securitisation of UK energy policy

The relationship between energy security, neoliberalism and climate change in the development of UK energy policy from 2003 to 2011 is discussed, with a particular focus on nuclear power. A ‘securitisation’ discourse has been associated with the promotion of nuclear interests, although the government policy storylines have been associated as much with changing party political priorities as with justifying instrumental policy objectives. However, the extent to which neoliberal electricity arrangements will be overridden in the wake of the securitising agenda is uncertain, due to the embedded nature of neoliberal practices.

Supporting Renewables: Local Ownership, Wind Power and Sustainable Finance

There are a range of ways to provide financial and institutional support for renewable energy projects — including direct government support and corporate investment. However, given that many renewable energy technologies are relatively small scale, there has also been enthusiasm for more grass roots orientated initiatives involving some degree of local involvement, including direct local ownership. In some countries, this approach has been adopted in the case of wind projects with some success. Quite apart from potentially contributing to local economic renewal, it is sometimes argued that local involvement, and especially ownership, helps to avoid local opposition to what may otherwise be seen as imposed projects.