• darkblurbg
    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
  • darkblurbg
    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
  • darkblurbg
    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
  • darkblurbg
    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
  • darkblurbg
    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

Political Economy



G03 - Time and Energy: Approaches to the Role of Time in Energy Politics

Date: Jun 2 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Heather Miller (University of Ottawa)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Angela Carter (University of Waterloo)


Session Abstract: Avoiding climate catastrophe requires urgent action -- countries must triple their ambition in order to meet their 2030 climate commitments. How can scholars develop research that best understands the influence of time on energy politics and policy making in Canada and internationally? Time is an under-conceptualized but crucially important concept in understanding energy politics. This panel seeks to address this gap by bringing together new scholarship examining the role of time in energy politics, policy and economies. The papers in this panel centre time in their analysis of energy systems and transformation. The panel is grounded in a review of how energy politics literature engages with temporal dynamics of energy systems. The subsequent papers explore how: (1) how sequencing, feedback, and path-dependency can nurture transformative change, (2) how time affects renewable energy uptake and (3) factors explaining policy resilience over time. This panel is policy-facing and these papers provide recommendations for policy-makers on how energy systems avoid a ‘double carbon trap,’ increase the growth of renewable energy, and facilitate climate policy durability.


Policy Feedbacks, Sequencing and Pacing, Oh My! The Role of Time in Energy Politics: Heather Millar (University of Ottawa), Amy Janzwood (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Energy and environmental politics scholars are increasingly noting the role of timing, sequencing, and pacing in explaining ongoing national and subnational political dynamics and policy outcomes. Scholarship on path dependency and policy feedbacks has noted the effect of energy and climate policy design on the resources of coalitions, perceptions of mass publics and capacities of governments to create durable policies. Alternatively, work on socio-technical transitions has stressed the importance of sequencing and transition pathways on decarbonization outcomes. Third, energy policy scholars have stressed the role of pacing and policy implementation as new technologies challenge vested interests. This paper systematically reviews how energy politics literature engages with temporal dimensions of energy systems and transformation. Despite the pervasiveness of time in different analytical frameworks, this review highlights that measuring the causal influence of time remains an ongoing methodological challenge for this literature. This review concludes with how energy politics literature can engage more closely, both theoretically and empirically, with temporal dimensions of energy politics.


Disrupting Carbon Lock-in: Acceleration and Decline : Daniel Rosenbloom (University of Toronto), Matthew Hoffmann (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Mitigating the most severe impacts of climate change requires the decarbonization of energy systems by mid-century. However, to date, decarbonization efforts have been insufficient in pace and scope to realize the needed low-carbon energy transitions. Recent work has conceptualized this problem in terms of a double carbon trap. In this view, decarbonization efforts are confronted by deep carbon lock-ins that 1) impede systems change in the first place (e.g., climate policies are reversed or too weak) or 2) lead to modest systems improvement that make fundamental transformations more difficult over time (e.g., initiatives promote process efficiency gains without addressing underlying lock-ins). A pressing question for policy is how can energy systems avoid becoming stuck in such a trap? Transitions research points to the interacting roles of innovation and decline (deliberately destabilizing fossil fuel systems by winding down institutional supports, for instance) in accelerating low-carbon pathways. Political science and transition perspectives also increasingly underscore how sequencing, feedback, and path-dependency can nurture transformative change. We bring these perspectives together to conceptualize how innovation-decline complementarities can overcome the double carbon trap through processes of catalytic change. Deploying a forward reasoning approach, we draw on examples from the energy space to illustrate the workings of the carbon trap (how initiatives get stuck) and explore plausible logics for breaking free. From this, we offer three considerations for climate-energy policy: leveraging innovation-decline complementarities; adopting a systems perspective (vis-à-vis a narrower focus on specific technologies); and acknowledging that small policy choices can unleash catalytic forces over time.


Understanding the Space-time and Governance Dimensions of a Renewable Energy Transition: Christina Hoicka (York University)
Abstract: Meeting the Paris Agreement or keeping global warming within 1.5oC requires growth of renewable energy (RE), somewhere between 40 and 100%, and the diffusion of low-carbon innovations. Technically, existing electricity grid technologies can accommodate somewhere between 20% and 40% RE. A higher share of RE requires a different logic and architecture based on space-time interactions of supply and demand, that requires increased flexibility options such as information, automation, allowing consumers to share and sell energy they generate, storage to use energy at a later time, electric vehicles, and increasing the time sensitivity and demand response of energy uses. Energy systems occupy a specific geography or context, and there is increasing attention to the localization and time sensitivity of the impacts and benefits from engineers and social scientists, focused respectively on the design of and governance of local energy systems. In this paper, I will outline the logic and architecture of RE growth, that is based in understanding space and time interactions of supply, demand, and the institutions that govern these relationships. I will explain how the diffusion of singular innovations, such as electric vehicles and solar photovoltaics, can create localized and time-sensitive negative consequential risks, and how solutions require regulatory change that also supports RE growth. I will finally discuss experimentation and emergence of multi-stakeholder governance models of local RE systems and explore their compatibility with energy democracy, RE growth, social acceptance, and minimization of negative consequences.


Exploring Carbon Pricing Resilience: The Case of Quebec Cap-and-Trade System: Erick Lachapelle (Université de Montréal), David Houle (Independent Researcher)
Abstract: Much has been written about Ontario’s and Alberta’s decisions in the past year to reverse course and eliminate their carbon pricing systems. Until recently, few jurisdictions with fully implemented carbon price regimes turned back the clock, with Australia being perhaps the most high-profile case. In each of these instances, conventional wisdom suggests that newly elected right-leaning governments were responsible for the demise of carbon pricing. However, despite very similar political circumstances that saw a new right-of-centre government form in 2018 under premier François Legault, Quebec has remained steadfast in its implementation of a carbon price. How can the resilience of carbon pricing policy in Quebec be explained? This paper argues that a combination of key factors set Quebec apart from most other provinces and collectively account for the province’s sustained commitment to carbon pricing: the presence of an interparty consensus, the relative absence of voter polarization on this topic, and the well-established perception that Quebec will benefit economically from the transition to a low-carbon economy. These factors interact and reinforce one another, and in the absence of disagreement among the province’s big economic players, especially the manufacturing sector, carbon pricing in Quebec is likely to persist. Those seeking to build durable climate policy in a rapidly warming world should pay close attention to how the Quebec consensus has emerged and seek to apply its lessons elsewhere.




Return to Home