Minor leaders of major importance: explaining informal climate leadership to accelerate decarbonisation and green energy transitions

Decades ago, climate negotiators dreamt of an international agreement with legally binding commitments in the form of clear targets and timelines for member states. The secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (the UNFCCC) is hailed as the chief orchestrator, with the annual conference of the parties to UNFCCC (COPs) as crucial site of coordination and performance. However, it is also clear that the COP mega-events are not the only game in town. Global climate governance plays out in a much broader array of arenas to implement commitments under the Paris Agreement, among those informal international organizations (IOs) which do not aim at developing legally binding obligations but foster exchange of best practices and policy learning. These are important to examine because while few major economies have stepped up as persistent and successful leaders within the UNFCCC, informal organizations offer smaller countries the opportunity to demonstrate leadership aspirations. One example for an informal organization with clear leadership structures engrained in its institutional set-up is the the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), a policy platform to facilitate the clean energy transition with currently 29 members, including small countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Even though the CEM primarily consists of G20 members, these three Nordic countries were invited to join due to their expertise and leadership ambitions in developing and sharing expertise on clean energy technologies. Taking on leadership is a costly and timely matter, especially for small countries with limited resources. From a rational standpoint, there are no hard benefits to be expected from leading in an informal organization as these do not establish binding commitments. Why do the Nordic countries then take on leadership tasks in the informal international climate organization CEM? This in-depth study of Nordic leadership since the CEM’s initial launch in 2009 features seven semi-structured interviews with former and current high-level bureaucrats of the respective ministries collaborating with this informal IO. We contribute to the notion of climate policy and leadership ambition in informal organizations at the international level by identifying two drivers for informal climate leadership. The first encompasses the will to teach others about the green energy technologies that dominate within their countries, and through this promote the economic interests of domestic corporate actors to jump-start the renewable energy transition. The second factor emphasizes securing the position of their country in the international political arena, and climate related co-operation as means to gain visibility and to strengthen diplomatic ties. We conclude that informal climate organizations support increasing decarbonization ambitions and through this also create new forms of climate leadership opportunities for small countries with major technology expertise.