The Role of Borders in the Transition Towards a Low Carbon Society

Abstract

The current adoption rate of renewable energies (RE) is insufficient, creating an urgent need to accelerate the curve of RE adoption. One significant obstacle to RE adoption is that RE is frequently either land intensive or has adverse implications on nearby stakeholders. As a result, one of the most pressing questions is how to identify factors that can increase the acceptability of RE sites. Endeavors by searching for socially acceptable RE sites may be confounded by other simultaneous shocks, including those relating to geopolitics, war and border disputes. While in the last decade transition studies have extensively explored the interplay between geopolitics and RE this literature is largely divorced from the transition literature on RE siting. Siting, which is often anchored in the disciplines of geography, planning and regional studies often operate at the micro level while RE geopolitics, often anchored in the discipline of international relations, operates at the macro and even global levels. The result is a truncated conception of RE, which significantly inhibits our ability to analyze and intervene in RE adoption. The aim of this study is to identify the missing link to bridge between energy geopolitics literature (often at the Macro level) on the one hand and the geography and planning literature dealing with local siting considerations on the other. This project will focus on the impact of political borders on RE siting, as the key to drastically improve scholars' ability to predict the location and timing of RE adoption and the choice of technology. Hence, this presentation will examine the conditions under which political borders may become a disruptive factor for RE technologies, where they may accelerate the transition to RE. It does so by developing a multidimensional typology that captures the various spatial options and governance mechanisms of RE in relation to borders. Next it, quantifies the extent to which borderlands are becoming a focal point for RE relative to the rest of Israel. This process involves temporal and spatial mapping of the adoption and diffusion of RE technologies across various border conditions and in regions distant from borders, which focuses on both household-level installations (e.g., rooftop solar panels) and utility-scale systems. By positioning borders as a central aspect of energy transition, the study aims to identify borders as a new variable in transition studies thus shed light on the intricate interplay between borders, governance, and RE technology choices.