Elin Lerum Boasson

National climate policy : a multi-field approach

1. A Multi-field Approach Part I: Theory 2. Multi-field Social Mechanisms 3. Multi-field Entrepreneurship Mechanisms Part II: Case Studies 4. The Power of Politics: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) 5. Entrepreneurship Paradoxes: Renewable Energy Policies 6. The Strength of a Pluralist Organizational Field: Energy Policy for Buildings Part III: Comparisons and Final Conclusions 7. Comparative Assessment 8. Theory Conclusions 9. Advice to Policymakers and Stakeholders

Climate governance entrepreneurship: Emerging findings and a new research agenda

This is an introductory paper to a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship, where entrepreneurship is understood as acts performed by actors seeking to ‘punch above their weight’. By contrast, actors who are merely doing their job are not ‘entrepreneurs’. In order to understand climate policy and governance, we need to learn more about the factors that condition variance in entrepreneurial activity, strategies and success. In this introduction, we present a comprehensive review of the literature on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in policy in governance, with special attention to the recent upsurge in studies of climate governance entrepreneurship. We distinguish two types of entrepreneurship: (1) acts aimed at enhancing governance influence by altering the distribution of authority and information; and (2) acts aimed at altering or diffusing norms and cognitive frameworks, worldviews or institutional logics. The contributions in this special issue offer valuable insights into how personal motivations, policy windows, international trends, cultural-institutional traditions and the distribution of structural power influence entrepreneurship. However, more work is needed – not least as regards whether actors that seek change are more active and/or more successful as entrepreneurs compared to those that defend the status quo, and whether there is more successful entrepreneurship in public or in private arenas of governance.

Entrepreneurship in climate governance at the local and regional levels : concepts, methods, patterns, and effects

This editorial sets the scene for a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship at the local and regional levels. To make climate governance work, much policy activity is needed at the local and regional levels. Entrepreneurs are actors who aim to affect change by using their agency. They target policy decisions at the local and regional levels, which might subsequently turn to other governance levels to expand their influence. The scientific discussion about governance entrepreneurs is characterized by a lack of conceptual clarity, by methodological challenges, and by several research gaps. Regarding the latter, at present, it is especially unclear when and why entrepreneurs become active, which factors they take into account when they select their strategies, and what explains the effects of entrepreneurial activity on the emergence of innovations in climate governance. All contributions to this special issue engage with one or several of these conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges, thus advancing the state of art in the field. Highlights from the special issue include the development of a simple conceptual frame that connects actors, contexts, strategies, and outcomes in a systematic way. Some promising methodological avenues are described, since the special issue contains not only some qualitative case studies but also some studies that take a long-term perspective by following policy development for decades, and a study that proposes a census approach. Empirically, the contributions in this special issue shed light on a range of factors explaining levels of entrepreneurial activity, and they carefully trace impacts over time. We conclude by sketching an agenda for further work in this realm.

Buildings: Good Intentions Unfulfilled

The European building stock consumes about 40 per cent of final energy in the EU and is responsible for about half of the CO2 emissions not covered by the EU Emissions Trading System (BPIE, 2011; European Commission, 2013). Reducing buildings’ energy consumption reduces demand for fossil fuel-generated energy, thus contributing to a reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to the achievement of decarbonization.