This paper investigates the role that three temporal factors play in renewable fuels policy developments in the European Union and the US: first, the timing of focusing events; second, the sequencing of knowledge accumulation processes regarding biofuel policies’ effects; and third, the legislative timetable of policy implementation. It argues that, in interaction with features of the ideational and institutional context of policy development in the two political systems, temporal factors have affected power and legitimation mechanisms of renewable fuels’ policy reproduction, and their ability to consolidate in the face of counter-mobilization by critics.
