Pathways for Technology Decline in the Energy Transition: A Cross-Country Comparison of Phase-Out Discourse and Policy Change

Around the world, countries are facing pressure to transform their electricity sectors to address the challenge of global climate change. In some places, the energy transition has already progressed into a new phase of development characterized by an accelerated diffusion of renewables and a decline of incumbent technologies such as coal or nuclear energy. While transition scholars have studied the policies and politics associated with emerging technologies and industries, we know comparably less about decline. This paper takes a closer look at processes of decline in the ongoing transition of the electricity sector in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement. We approach the topic by taking a sustainability transitions perspective, with a focus on changes in policies and the underlying politics. This study compares the phase-out processes in three countries - Finland, Germany and the UK - that are seeking to give up coal-fired or nuclear power in the coming decades. These countries can be seen as representing different phases in the processes of technology decline; Germany being the frontrunner, the UK having entered the first phase of transitions, and Finland emerging as a latecomer. To learn from and compare the countries' approaches to technology decline, we adopt a discursive approach and complement it with policy document analysis. Given that discourses help reveal material and social path-dependencies, and in this way influence the shared expectations or political contestations about sustainable energy transitions among a variety of actors; we see discursive approaches especially apt for examining the politics of related to pathways on technology decline. Our study is based on a combination of media articles, policy documents and statistical data. We analyse the countries' policy development and discourse on phase-out along four different dimensions: i) emergence, salience, and dynamics of the phase-out discourse, ii) policy support (policy-driven, independent, slowed-down), iii) nature and speed of technology decline, iv) actors and businesses most affected by technology decline. The results are expected to yield much needed empirical insights into the socio-technical transitions of electricity sectors, and as such contribute directly to the literature on sustainability transition theory and policy.