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This paper explores the ways in which clean energy is being governed in India. It does so in order to improve our understanding of the potential and limitations of carbon finance in supporting lower carbon energy transitions, and to strengthen our appreciation of the role of politics in enabling or frustrating such endeavors. In particular we emphasize the importance of politics and the nature of India's political economy in understanding the development of energy sources and technologies defined as 'clean' both through the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and leading international actors. By considering the broad range of institutions that exert formal and informal political influence over how the benefits and costs of the CDM are distributed, the paper highlights shortcomings in the narrow way in which CDM governance has been conceptualized to date. This approach goes beyond analysis of technocratic aspects of governance – often reduced to a set of institutional design issues – in order to appreciate the political nature of the trade-offs that characterize debates about India's energy future and the relations of power which will determine how, and on whose terms, they are resolved.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forms a key part of the international community's attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but continues to fall short on its promise to provide sustainable development benefits in developing countries. Research by the Governance of Clean Development Project suggests that current reform agendas will do little to rectify this unless important aspects of the politics and governance of clean development are addressed. This briefing outlines the need to change the political relationships that determine who benefits from the CDM, which go beyond reducing market transaction costs or overhauling the formal institutions of CDM governance. Policies are required that recognise these challenges and create opportunities to drive significant changes in how governance works for both climate and development.

Despite significant technological advances in emerging economies, the further development of clean energy technologies in developing countries remains crucial to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with economic development. In this paper we address two significant gaps in the growing body of literature that has assessed the role of the Clean Development Mechanism in promoting the transfer of clean technologies to developing countries. First, we present a qualitative analysis of the governance of the Clean Development Mechanism in India. This provides a basis for understanding the extent to which and the ways in which governance may impact upon the likelihood that projects promote technology transfer. Second, we provide a novel quantification of the level and nature of technology transfer that has occurred in Indian Clean Development Mechanism projects, based on insights from literature on technological capability building. We find that the Clean Development Mechanism in India has produced a negligible number of projects that promote technology transfer if technology transfer is understood as a process of learning about technology. Together these qualitative and quantitative analyses show how politics and governance have contributed to the current form of the Clean Development Mechanism market in India, in which processes of building indigenous technological capabilities have been neglected.

Is it possible for Kenya to simultaneously tackle energy poverty, contribute to climate change mitigation and reduce exposure to climate vulnerability? There is growing international focus on how to support more integrated approaches to addressing climate change in ways that capture synergies and minimise the trade-offs between climate change mitigation, adaptation and development. These aims are embodied in the concept of climate compatible development (CCD). But what does this look like in practice in Kenya? With a National Action Plan on Climate Change, a Vision 2030 Strategy, a new constitution and a revised Energy Policy, Kenya is at critical cross-roads with respect to defining its energy future for the years to come. The challenge is to enable a just transition to a lower carbon economy that delivers poverty reduction and climate resilience at the same time. But thinking about who sets the terms of transition and for whom, raises key political questions about the role of actors, interests and institutions in the energy sector. In other words, who has the power to power change?

This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful 'minerals-energy complex' that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyses the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions.

This paper explores the opportunities for a 'just transition' to low carbon and sustainable energy systems; one that addresses the current inequities in the distribution of energy benefits and their human and ecological costs. In order to prioritize policies that address energy poverty alleviation and sustainability concerns, national action and higher levels of international cooperation and coordination are required to steer public policy towards a broader range of public interests. This also implies re-directing the vast sums of private energy finance that currently serve a narrow set of interests. This paper considers how national and global energy governance must adapt and change to ensure a just transition to low carbon and sustainable energy systems. Creating a low carbon and sustainable energy transition will face significant challenges in overcoming opposition from a broad array of interest groups. The challenges of guiding a just transition are amplified by the relinquishing of government control over the energy sector in many countries and the current weak and fragmented state of global energy governance. The necessary changes in energy decision making will entail complex trade-offs and rebound effects that make strong, participatory and transparent institutional arrangements essential in order to govern such challenges equitably. In this respect, procedural justice is critical to achieving distributive justice and to creating a simultaneously rapid, sustainable and equitable transition to clean energy futures.

Global policies and instruments to tackle climate change look very different once translated into domestic programmes of action, reflecting varied institutional capacity, competing priorities, and diverse political cultures and political economies. In light of these variations, this article analyses how clean energy is governed in India, both through and beyond the Clean Development Mechanism. Governance processes are assessed across a number of scales, including various actors involved in mobilising finance and providing political and institutional support for clean energy. The nature of these relationships ultimately determines the nature of the relationship between policy goals such as energy security, alleviation of energy poverty and greenhouse gas emission reductions. Understanding these governance dimensions is therefore critical to assessing prospects for low carbon energy transitions in rapidly industrialising countries such as India.

The idea of a resource curse has influenced policy makers and led to calls for good governance to avoid the pitfalls of oil sector development. Through discussion of Ghana's recent insertion into the global political economy of oil, this paper describes the limits of the resource curse framing and associated liberal institutional management approaches to the inherently political nature of oil exploration and production. The paper describes ways in which sovereignty has been exercised both in opposition to and in support of foreign capital, and the role of discourses of 'good governance' in structuring the material politics of resource access.