Publications and Research

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

Germany is an exemplary case of an energy transition from nuclear energy and fossil fuels toward renewables in the electricity sector, but it also demonstrates repeated, increasingly successful counter-mobilization by energy incumbents and their allies. The course for Germany's energy transition was largely set with the adoption of a feed-in tariff law in 1990, but since then the energy transition has been altered by a series of policy-making episodes, each of which was shaped by the outcomes of the previous episodes; there has been a combination of reinforcing and reactive sequences. This article uses policy windows and advocacy coalition theory, supplemented by work on resistance to carbon pricing, to analyze the four periods in which opponents of the energy transition had the greatest opportunities to limit or reverse it. It makes three main arguments intended to influence future research on energy transitions: 1) episodes of opposition to the feed-in tariff policy occurred when problem awareness and political commitment converged; 2) the outcomes of those conflicts depended on the balance of mobilization by advocacy and opposing coalitions; and 3) rising household costs due to the renewable-energy surcharge drove both problem awareness and the composition of the opposing coalition, which helped lead to a more far-reaching retrenchment of renewable-energy policy in 2014 than in earlier periods.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.