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Drawing on semi‐structured interviews, this paper examines the geographies of environmental expertise underpinning the "dieselgate" scandal as it has played out at the EU level. It begins by mapping the scandal as a conflict between two distinct "knowledge space‐times." The first of these – underpinned by official off‐the‐road vehicle emissions tests – links epistemic credibility to the ideal of experimental reproducibility. The second – underpinned by the "crowdsourcing" of publicly generated fuel economy measurements – links epistemic credibility to the ideals of empirical richness and diversity. The paper argues, however, that "expertise" in this controversy should not be understood exclusively as the attribute of knowledge produced according to particular spatial or temporal logics. Instead, the boundaries of credible expertise in this case are predetermined by an "anti‐political" ontology of vehicle emissions which presumes their status as a single, homogenous object of governance. Drawing on Barry's concept of "metrological regimes," the paper therefore contends that the full political potential of dieselgate can only be unlocked by inventing new logics of counting and categorisation that might force us to think differently about how best to partition, label, measure, and ultimately govern the inherently messy practices from which individual acts of driving – and hence vehicle emissions – emerge in the first place.

From a discursive-institutionalist perspective I seek to establish the influence exerted over environmental agenda setting and policy change by ideas and discourse, through an examination of recent developments in the UK's flagship biofuels policy, the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO). Discursive institutionalism's central contention is that the intricate interactions between ideas and institutions should be at the centre of studies of the policy-making process. By elucidating the mutually reinforcing character of cognitive processes (including 'framing' and 'boundary work') and institutional factors (such as 'standard operating procedures' and path dependency), I show how, despite a raft of countervailing evidence, significant changes in both the form and objectives of the RTFO were precluded. Longer-term research is required to establish the precise precipitating circumstances enabling such stability to result from these feedbacks, however, as it is—theoretically at least—equally likely that far shorter periods of dramatic policy change, or 'paradigm shifts', will emerge.

Drawing on in-depth qualitative research exploring EU biofuels policy, this article aims to advance understandings of the role and influence of policy entrepreneurs within Kingdon's (2011) multiple streams framework (MSF). Focusing on one entrepreneurial policy official, the article analyses both, the particular discursive techniques this official deployed in seeking to influence EU biofuels policy, and the wider contextual factors that impinged on those techniques' ability to actually attain policy influence. Persuasive framing is shown to have enabled the entrepreneur to influence initial agenda setting processes, whilst boundary work is shown to have enabled the same official to subsequently defend an existing policy in the face of widespread criticism. Critical interactions between all three streams of the MSF, however, were outside the control of this policy entrepreneur, implying that discursive techniques alone are insufficient to open (or close) policy windows.

Whilst transport biofuels have enjoyed strong political support in Europe for much of the past decade, concerns over their full impacts have an almost equally long history. Since 2008 these concerns have centred most intently upon the land-use change impacts of biofuel production, whereby increased demand for biofuels leads nonagricultural landscapes to be converted—either directly or indirectly—into agricultural ones. Amongst other things, biofuel-driven land-use change might potentially lead to significant emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), losses of biodiversity, reduced ecosystem resilience, degradation of soil and water resources, declines in regional food security, or even land rights infringements through so-called 'land-grabbing'. Political debates surrounding biofuel-driven land-use change in Europe have historically been restricted, however, to considerations of technical modelling work addressing the GHG emissions that might result from this process, thereby ignoring a wide range of alternative issues. Adopting a discursive-institutionalist perspective, this paper scrutinises two interrelated sets of dynamics pertaining to the handling of this political issue in Europe. First, it examines how the specific bureaucratic context of Brussels has itself been constitutive of the discursive practices used by policy makers to establish and retain control of the prevailing political conception of biofuel-driven land-use change. Second, it examines how these practices have inevitably led to what Scott terms a "narrowing of vision" in policy makers' approach to this problem, with concomitant implications for the role occupied by conceptions of 'place' in the policy process. In both instances the argument is made that such interactions exclude critical perspectives on what is at stake in the drive for biofuels from relevant policy-making procedures altogether. In light of these conclusions, I contend that future geographical analyses of environmental policy making writ large should pay greater attention to the interactions of discourse and place, particularly if they are to better understand the precise mechanisms through which political controversy is ultimately managed and settled in modern democratic contexts today.