Enabling Sustainable Energy Transitions: Practices of legitimation and accountable governance

“This compact book argues that ideas about accountability and legitimation – drawn from work on environmental governance – can open up new analytical perspectives on what is holding back effective energy system transformation. With bite-size chapters and illustrative cases that draw on the work of five expert witnesses, this is a novel intervention into debates over the politics of energy transition.” -Professor Gavin Bridge, Durham University, UK “The book theorizes and advances the research frontier on legitimation practices and accountability with a carefully crafted analysis bridging scholarly fields of environmental governance, political economy, energy research and democratic theory. It is a must-read for all students and scholars interested in shaping more legitimate, democratic and accountable energy transition from the local to global context.” -Professor Karin Bäckstrand, Stockholm University, Sweden This open access book reframes sustainable energy transitions as being a matter of resolving accountability crises. It demonstrates how the empirical study of several practices of legitimation can analytically deconstruct energy transitions, and presents a typology of these practices to help determine whether energy transitions contribute to sustainability. The real-world challenge of climate change requires sustainable energy transitions. This presents a crisis of accountability legitimated through situated practices in a wide range of cases including: solar energy transitions in Portugal, urban energy transitions in Germany, forestland conflicts in Indonesia, urban carbon emission targets in Norway, transport electrification in the Nordic region, and biodiversity conservation and energy extraction in the USA. By synthesising these cases, chapters identify various dimensions wherein practices of legitimation construct specific accountability relations. This book deftly illustrates the value of an analytical approach focused on accountable governance to enable sustainable energy transitions. It will be of great use to both academics and practitioners working in the field of energy transitions. Siddharth Sareen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Prologue -- Part I -- Chapter 1: Reframing energy transitions as resolving accountability crises -- Chapter 2: A typology of practices of legitimation to categorise accountability relations -- Part II -- Chapter 3: Five easy pieces: Legitimation at work in cases related to energy transitions -- Chapter 4: Historicising accountability: Berlin’s energy transitions -- Chapter 5: A few reflections on accountability -- Chapter 6: Do climate targets matter? The accountability of target-setting in urban climate and energy policy -- Chapter 7: Governance and legitimation in the transition to Nordic electric mobility -- Chapter 8: Accountability and the regulation of legitimacy: Biodiversity conservation and energy extraction in the American West -- Part III -- Chapter 9: Practices of legitimation and accountability crises in a range of energy transitions -- Chapter 10: Conclusion: Legitimation and accountability in energy transitions research -- Appendix I: A workshop, parallel exhibitions and associated events -- Appendix II: Photos from the events in Bergen, May 2019.