Metrics for an accountable energy transition? Legitimating the governance of solar uptake
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8942229 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sareen (0000-0002-0826-7311, University of Bergen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 114 |
| Pages | 30-39 |
| Publication date | 2020-05-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geoforum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.05.018 |
| OpenAlex | W3030953491 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
| References cited | 28 |
For recent techno-economic advances in solar energy to enable sustainable energy transformation, society must address institutional inertia and entrenched resistance by powerful stakeholders. Legitimation of power and specific metrics produces institutional authority to govern energy transitions, by reconfiguring accountability relations between situated actors. This article studies how metrics are legitimated and thus analyzes solar energy governance in Portugal. It identifies accountability relations by tracking four practices of legitimation – discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial – in relation to metrics that help perform expertise and authority within changing topographies of power during sectoral transition. The approach unpacks both (i) how metrics modulate the dynamics of shifts and resistance, and (ii) how their insufficient specification privileges a reductive structural understanding of energy sectors. Drawing on expert interviews, desk-based and field observations, the study explicates how up to 2018, solar energy governance in Portugal limited disruptive change, validated incremental change, and left transformative potential untapped
Accountability · Bureaucracy · Corporate governance · Economic system · Economics · Energy transition · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Management · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Public relations · Sociology · Technocracy · Transformative learning · Energy and Environment Impacts · Law · Public Administration · Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
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Solar photovoltaic energy infrastructures, land use and sociocultural context in Portugal
Styringskapasitet for urbane lavkarbonfremtider
The politics of land in Israel’s solar transition
Accountability implications for intermediaries in upscaling
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Accountability and sustainability transitions
Digitalisation and social inclusion in multi-scalar smart energy transitions
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Exploring the spatial characteristics of energy injustice
Decision-making and scalar biases in solar photovoltaics roll-out
Reviving a ghost project
If there is no support, we won’t advance”
Climate governance by numerical data
Solidaric solarities
Legitimating power
Multiscalar Practices of Fossil Fuel Displacement
Bridging socio-technical and justice aspects of sustainable energy transitions
Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C
Renewable energy and geopolitics
Policy
Ethics of quantification
Through the Lens of Accountability
The Legitimation of Power
How deep is incumbency? A ‘configuring fields’ approach to redistributing and reorienting power in socio-material change
Solar ‘power’
Rescaling low‐carbon transformations
Rule and Rupture
Rethinking Power and Authority
Symbolic and Substantive Legitimation in Professional Practice
| Unique citing works | 18 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |