Suchergebnisse

Reaching the climate targets set in the Paris Agreement on climate change requires decarbonizing all parts of the global economy. The electrification of industry processes—and more specifically, electrosynthesis (ES)—is an important decarbonization mechanism. To tap into this mechanism's potential and accelerate the decarbonization of these processes, I argue that public policy needs to perform two tasks. First, energy policy needs to enable the provision of CO(2) emissions-free baseload electricity. Second, innovation policy needs to accelerate cost reductions for ES. Here, I discuss why this is the case, what the challenges are, how policy makers can address them, and how political ambition can be increased.

Reaching the climate targets set in the Paris Agreement on climate change requires decarbonizing all parts of the global economy. The electrification of industry processes—and more specifically, electrosynthesis (ES)—is an important decarbonization mechanism. To tap into this mechanism's potential and accelerate the decarbonization of these processes, I argue that public policy needs to perform two tasks. First, energy policy needs to enable the provision of CO2 emissions-free baseload electricity. Second, innovation policy needs to accelerate cost reductions for ES. Here, I discuss why this is the case, what the challenges are, how policy makers can address them, and how political ambition can be increased. ; ISSN:2589-0042

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory‐building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy‐induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed‐methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal‐typical trajectories of policy change.