Biogas at the intersection of agricultural, environment and energy governance: (potentially) conflicting interests and consistent policy framework?

ABSTRACT

Many policy issues are interdependent, while much policy making occurs in sector silos, involving sectoral networks each dominated by their own policy ideas and interests. Such parallel policy-making increases the risk of incoherent policy mixes across policy sectors. However, when new policy issues emerge that cut across existing sectors, opening a new policy field, it presents opportunities for a reconfiguration of actors in new networks. Such network reconfigurations could lead to more coherent policies for interdependent policy issues. This paper examines the Danish policy framework to promote biogas, focusing on the consistency of the policy mix with regards to sustainable development of biogas, and how reconfigurations of actor networks across policy sectors have affected the policy mix. We find that the policy mix is coherent, integrating policy objectives across sectors, and show that this owes in part to a policy community type network that evolved over time. The paper contributes to research on policy instrument mixes by showing how certain types of policy networks may contribute to developing consistent policy mixes. We also identify important coordinating roles of two new intermediary actors, including a government task force, suggesting that procedural policy instruments may contribute to developing consistent policy mixes.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy mix
• networks
• biogas
• environmental policy
• energy policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nordic Council of Ministers; Danish Council for Strategic Research.

Notes on contributors

Helle Ørsted Nielsen

Helle Ørsted Nielsen is a Senior Researcher (PhD Political Science) at Aarhus University, Department of Environmental Science and Department of Political Science HON’s research focuses on governance, policy integration and implementation, design of policy instruments and target group behavior in the fields of energy, climate and environmental policy.

Anders Branth Pedersen

Anders Branth Pedersen is Senior Researcher (PhD, Political Science) at Aarhus University, Department of Environmental Science. ABP’s research is primarily centered on environmental policy analyses and environmental governance in a multi-level setting, including studies on network governance, on implementation barriers and on the effectiveness of environmental policies and policy instruments.