Suchergebnisse

This doctoral thesis analyses the efforts by China, the United States and the European Union to transition to a green economy. The research questions are: a) Which capacities to transition to a green economy do China, the United States, and the European Union have? How do they govern their respective transition processes? b) Are China, the United States, and the European Union advancing in their quest to decarbonise their economies? The aim is to learn which capacities are needed for a successful green transition. The research is based on a most different research design with three in-depth case studies of the Chinese transport sector, the US electricity sector and the European grid infrastructure. The political entities have the highest pollution and economic output. The selected sectors are central aspects of a green economy, the cases are putting significant efforts into greening and exemplify strengths and weaknesses of each approach to transition governance. Transitions are complex and unsteady long-term processes based on a restructuring of societal preferences. A successful transition is S-shaped: it starts slowly and rapidly accelerates until it finds a new equilibrium. Key transition concepts fail to conceptualise the envisioned reduction of environmental degradation. Furthermore, the role of actors remains unclear and the coevolution of various facets is hardly elaborated. This thesis aims to bring transition research and governance closer together. This thesis develops a three-layered analytical model of the interplay of political leadership, institutional transmission belts and key policy functions. The focus is on public actors showing political leadership as the key top-down mechanism. The institutional design works as a transmission belt. The model assumes three key functions for transition governance: the economic framework, innovation cycle and social policy. Since transitions are a coevolutionary process, the elements are intertwined through feedback loops. Electro mobility can reduce ...

Climate change scholars generally urge that CO2emissions need to be cut rapidly if we are to avoid dangerous risks of climate change. However, climate change mitigation policies are widely perceived to have regressive effects — that is, putting a higher financial burden as a proportion of household income on poor than on rich households. This is one of several major barriers to the adoption of effective mitigation policies. They would also have considerable social justice implications requiring significant welfare state responses. We assess the claim that climate change policies have regressive effects by comparing different types of mitigation policies. We will argue that many of these are indeed likely to have regressive distributional implications but that there are several policy options to counteract regressive effects.

Climate change scholars generally urge that CO2 emissions need to be cut rapidly if we are to avoid dangerous risks of climate change. However, climate change mitigation policies are widely perceived to have regressive effects — that is, putting a higher financial burden as a proportion of household income on poor than on rich households. This is one of several major barriers to the adoption of effective mitigation policies. They would also have considerable social justice implications requiring significant welfare state responses. We assess the claim that climate change policies have regressive effects by comparing different types of mitigation policies. We will argue that many of these are indeed likely to have regressive distributional implications but that there are several policy options to counteract regressive effects.