Policy Feedback, Institutional Context and Pathways in Energy Transitions – UK and German Renewable Energy Policy and Outcomes.

Interest in policy and technological feedback processes in energy transitions, and particularly in whether and how such effects may be harnessed to accelerate transitions, has expanded rapidly in recent years. However, in one sense, policy feedback arguments run the risk of being tautological; if a policy in any one case becomes locked in over time, positive feedback must by definition have been more dominant than any negative effects. In such cases the policy framework can provide an interesting post hoc interpretation of events, but it is less clear whether it has any explanatory power. This suggests that comparative analyses of policy feedback are the most useful avenue for the further development of the research programme. In turn, a comparative approach raises the question of what potential causal factors will determine how policy feedback dynamics will vary, across countries, sectors and policy problems. In this paper I argue that, beyond the obvious importance of variation in interests, the key factor is institutional context, and that the policy feedback literature should give more attention to the articulation between institutional context and how policy effects and feedback mechanisms work. A second, related argument is about the patterns of outcomes that we see as the result of policy feedback dynamics. The importance of negative as well as positive feedback dynamics has been increasingly recognised. However, the concern with accelerating energy transitions has (understandably) tended to focus attention on a single dimension of success or failure, lock-in or retrenchment. Instead, I argue that we need to recognise how policy feedback dynamics play an important role in determining the nature and direction of energy transitions beyond that single dimension. This perspective connects to (and provides an underlying political analysis of) the vast ‘pathways’ literature. In this paper I illustrate these two related arguments through a comparison of the experiences of German and UK renewable energy policy and outcomes.