LIST OF PANELS

As the effects of climate change become apparent across a range of issues – from the increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes, floods, heatwaves and forest fires to the dislocation of people and other social effects, and from species extinction to the rise of political conflicts – governments at different levels are grappling with how to make rapid and enduring energy transitions as one way to mitigate climate change. A considerable literature examines the different inputs to energy transitions across national contexts that are associated with a greater likelihood of nations adopting transition policies - such as political (Gromet et al., 2013), economic (Apergis and Danuletiu, 2014;) and social factors (Blanchet, 2015). Other literatures examine the ways path dependencies –particularly “carbon lock-in” and investments and sunk costs in fossil fuel infrastructure –make transitions difficult.  While generally explaining policy inertia and stability (Erickson et al., 2015), some scholars in this tradition found exogenous shocks such as climate change itself and COVID-19 could break the carbon lock-in (Simmie, 2012).

However, there are several important yet unanswered questions about energy transitions that we need to answer in order to explain not only how governments adopt transition policies but how they might implement them in ways that are enduring. This means moving beyond an examination of the ability of governments to muster the political will to adopt climate policies – especially energy transition policies – but also to develop implementation strategies with the potential for long-term success, such as changing infrastructure, institutions, and even democratic practice (Schlosberg et al., 2017). This research challenge can be addressed from organizational, sociological, and political theoretical perspectives that emphasize technological challenges. For example, several scholars have addressed how institutions could shape the possible transitions from one socio-technical system to another and how they influence actors and society (Geels, 2004). Questions about implementation are merely technological, however. But we also need normative perspectives that address questions related to environmental and climate justice in implementing climate policies (Caney, 2014; Hajer & Versteeg, 2019). Normative issues include, for example, the equity of the distributions of benefits and burdens of climate policies across social classes and generations (O’Brien et al., 2018; Carley et al., 2018; Barnett & Palutikof, 2015; Kartha, 2011), and the fairness of democratic (and other) forms of decision making (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014; Dodge, 2014). Climate justice is not a pure environmental issue at all, instead it represents an ethical issue (Caney, 2005). Many organized groups such as Climate Justice Alliance are demanding that these governing bodies address climate justice and equity. Several local governments also address climate equity issue in their climate action plan, ensuring that the implementation of energy policies would be an equitable and a democratic process.

            The focus of this panel is on the process of energy transitions, especially related to the implementation of energy transition policies, and the organizational, technological and normative aspects that arise after policy adoption. How do governments at different levels – local, sub-national, national, or even internationally – implement energy transitions policies? What organizational, political, technological and other resources must be mobilized to ensure the transformation of infrastructure, technology and governing system needed to mitigate climate change and its worst effects over the long term? In what ways do oppositional actors throw up barriers to implementation that do not derive from path dependencies, and how are these addressed by protagonists of energy transition policies? How are normative issues organized into or out of implementation plans? And what are the political and policy effects of this? These questions have the potential to develop new knowledge on energy transitions in unexplored areas, and also to provide meaningful lessons for practitioners on-the-ground who are attempting to implement energy transitions, often with fewer resources than they need to support rapid energy transitions.

In order to have a rich discussion across different perspectives, this panel welcomes both theoretical and empirical works that address questions related to the implementation of energy transition policies at different or inter-related governing levels or scales, and the related normative issues that arise in implementation. We welcome submissions that adopt diverse theoretical perspective, for example, from political science, sociology, public administration and policy, among others. We are especially interested in empirical studies that adopt a qualitative orientation useful for answering “how” questions related to policy implementation (Yin, 2018), which draw our attention to the processes by which energy transitions are implemented or thwarted, and by which normative issues are organized into these processes (and related policies) or not.