What are the politics of industrial decarbonisation?

Abstract

Speaker: Matthew Lockwood, University of Sussex With the adoption of net zero targets, climate policy attention in many countries is increasingly turning to harder-to-abate sectors of the economy. One of these is heavy industry, including iron and steel, cement, chemicals, refining, glass, ceramics and others. In this paper a framework for analysing the politics of industrial decarbonisation policy is proposed, and illustrated by application to the case of the UK. Industrial decarbonisation policy in the UK has been evolving since the mid-2010s, culminating in the 2021 Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy with detailed plans and funding for a number of zero-carbon industrial clusters now proceeding. The study draws on documentary evidence and interviews with policy makers, industry actors and civil society organization representatives. It is argued that there are four inter-related dimensions: the politics of technological advocacy coalitions; the distributional politics of policy costs and benefits across industry, taxpayers and consumers; the politics of geographical distribution of policy benefits across regions (and therefore industries as these are unevenly located, and also party politics in contexts such as the UK with plurality voting systems), and the local politics of infrastructure, which may become articulated with national politics through the planning system and/or party politics.