Political Feasibility of Energy Transitions: Assessment Framework and Case-Studies

Transforming energy systems to avoid global warming above 1.5C is technically possible but is it politically feasible? To answer this question we depart from the traditional approach which views socio-political factors as static ‘barriers’ and ‘enablers’ to techno-economic developments and which overly focuses on benefits and motivations thus mistaking desirability for feasibility. Instead we advance the approach to evaluating the feasibility of low-carbon energy transitions in a context-sensitive way with a space for actors and agency. We start with defining an outcome as politically feasible if there is a path for an actor or a group of actors to achieve this outcome in a given context. We introduce a concept of a dynamic feasibility space which is a function of paths to desirable outcomes available to relevant actors in relevant contexts. One of the scientific challenges of operationalising this approach to political feasibility of energy transitions is in finding a rigorous method of constructing plausible paths to desired outcomes. We address this challenges by conceptualising causal mechanisms of energy transitions which integrate relevant disciplines and domains of knowledge to produce accounts of energy transitions that are generalizable across a diversity of contexts and actors of energy transitions. We describe six major mechanisms of energy transitions: supply-demand balance, state intervention, technology innovation, international diffusion, increasing returns, and lock-in. Each of these mechanisms is recurring in that it is present in the vast majority of long-term energy transitions, making it possible to explain, compare and anticipate them. However, the variation in the combinations of these mechanisms and their relative strengths is what makes each energy transition unique and explains the diversity of outcomes. In the final step, we demonstrate a method for constructing probabilistic and dynamic political feasibility spaces for energy transitions by (1) identifying causal mechanisms enabling or blocking the path to the necessary transition outcome; (2) linking the strengths of these mechanisms to the characteristics of actors and contexts; and (3) constructing the feasibility space based on the likely range of these characteristics at present and in the future. We illustrate this method with respect to national progress towards renewable expansion and coal phase-out.