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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.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium ‘Scale in environmental governance: power reconfiguration, democratic legitimacy and institutional (mis-)fit’, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin 7-8 March 2013. We would like to thank the symposium participants, special issue editors and three anonymous referees for their comments and advice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 We refer to these territories as ‘sub-national’ rather than regional, to avoid confusion with international relations conventions that define ‘regional’ as a scale immediately above the ‘national’ (see Van den Brande et al., Citation2012).
2 This limited political attention may also reflect the fact that, following years of emphasis on liberalization and privatization within the UK electricity system, by the late 1990s there was emerging consensus between the main parties that formal, state energy policy was largely unnecessary or, at least, not a priority (Helm, Citation2003).
3 We make greater use of the simpler formulation of ‘modes of governing’ from Bulkeley et al. (Citation2005), concerned with ‘the means through which governing power is exercised’, rather than the more specific way in which the conjunctions of modes and objectives is developed in Bulkeley et al. (Citation2007). In this latter paper, in the sphere of waste, they identify four main modes: waste disposal, waste diversion, eco-efficiency and waste as a resource. Our emphasis on modes of governance within the sphere of renewable energy may thus owe more to the formulations of Treib et al. (Citation2005), which equate modes with policy instruments. Such simplification suits our context, in which we are seeking to pursue a four-way comparison, but our analysis does look beyond instruments narrowly construed to consider the range of processes that hold instruments in place, and the relationship between modes and objects of governance remains centre stage.
4 The Welsh Office, the Scottish Office and the Northern Ireland Office respectively.
5 We use ‘Westminster’ as shorthand for the political institutions and policy-making capacity of the UK government, most of which is exercised from London.
6 To preserve interviewee anonymity, we use a code system to identify specific interviews. ‘Scot’ means interviewee was based in Scotland, ‘NI’ in Northern Ireland, ‘Wales’ in Wales and ‘Eng’ in England or UK level. ‘Gov’ indicates that the interviewee works for the government (officer or politicians), ‘Adv’ that they are an advisor, ‘LPA’ that they work for a local planning authority; ‘NGO’ that they are from a non-governmental environmental group; ‘Com’ that they work for a company, ‘Tra’ for a trade association and ‘QGO’ that they work for a quango. The number at the end differentiates interviewees within the same category of respondent.
7 Prime Minister at the point in time referred to.
8 The language is softer in Wales where the 2020 goals are referred to as ‘aims’, not targets, and the 2012 update to the UK Renewable Energy Roadmap states that ‘(t)he Welsh Government does not have devolved renewable energy targets’ (DECC, Citation2012, para 2.15).
9 Although the framing of the renewable energy targets in terms of ‘domestic’ electricity consumption obscures the fact that Wales and Scotland are significant producers and exporters of gas and coal-generated electricity.
10 The sizeable volumes of hydro-electricity generation capacity in Scotland pre-date devolution.
11 We take the RO process to be the main market support mechanism for renewable energy coincident with the period of devolution. We set aside the preceding Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation, on the grounds that by comparison with the RO it incentivised relatively little new renewable energy capacity. There is also a Feed-in Tariff (FiT), introduced in 2008, which supports small-scale renewable energy development (mostly under 5MW). The FiT is funded by the addition of a precept on the bills of electricity consumers, and is administered by Ofgem in a spatially consistent way across England, Scotland and Wales. We also set this aside, as our focus is on larger scale facilities.
12 Correspondence, Alex Salmond to Chris Huhne, 12 July 2011.
13 Letters from Derek Mackay, Minister for Local Government and Planning of the Scottish Government, to Moray Council and Fife Council, 6 August 2012.
14 Under Labour governments during the first decade of the twenty-first century, Westminster did work to construct a hierarchy of national and sub-national targets for the English regions, but this whole apparatus disappeared with the 2010 Coalition Government and the abolition of both regional government and most targets (Power & Cowell, Citation2012).
15 The reality of these announcements may amount to nothing like a local veto (Early, Citation2013), but the Conservative Party subsequently issued statements proclaiming that its manifesto for the 2015 election would introduce such a measure.
16 Lord Deben, quoted in Murray (2014) ‘Committee on climate change insists onshore wind still has a role to play in cost-effective energy mix’, Business Green, 28 May. http://businessgreen.com/bg/news/2346982, accessed 29 May 2014.
17 The only (partial) exception to this pattern is that the Welsh and Scottish Governments have shown a greater inclination to use spatialized policies for on-shore energy and other infrastructure than Westminster, in turn giving future national development scenarios greater tangibility and attracting more responses. However, the devolved governments also broadly share the UK government's support for European Commission moves to further accelerate the decision-making process for TENs (Trans-European Connections) like cross-border electricity grids and pipelines, which would further interconnect their energy markets but also frame national decision-making processes within an EU Directive.
18 Ed Davey MP, Secretary of State for Climate Change, speech, 18 June 2013, Brussels. In the end, the EU endorsed binding renewable energy targets beyond 2020, but for the EU as a whole not disaggregated to individual member states.
19 November 2014.
20 http://www.go100percent.org/cms/index.php?id=3, accessed 17 June 2014.