Drivers for Local Energy Policy-Making

Local energy policy-making and the outcome of the same vary distinctly between regions, not only within the international context, but also between neighboring counties (see the

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heat-maps in section1.1). The literature on local energy policy-making identies a large variety of possible drivers that foster or hinder regional support for action against climate change, for sustainability, and for a transition towardsRE. Those drivers can be catego-rized in four groups: political, economic, geographical, and relational.

Various political drivers are identied in the literature that are potentially aecting the energy transition: (1) As in most policy areas, party constellations within a certain region or state government may alter the outcome of energy policy-making.Huang et al.(2007) and Vachon and Menz (2006) found for the US context, that a democratic control over the legislature or governorship has a signicant positive aect on adopting `Sustainable Energy Portfolio Standards' (Chandler, 2009, 3275). Government ideology (or in other words: the beliefs that governmental actors hold) might thus be a primary driver of en-ergy policy-making. (2) Local authorities' competencies highly determine to what extent they can foster the energy transition (Collier and Löfstedt, 1997). The more constrained they are by state and federal laws and regulations, the more dicult it is to make ad-vancements. Although local authorities generally have responsibilities that are key for the energy transition, those competencies vary distinctively between countries (Collier and Löfstedt,1997). (3) The organizational structure of local departments and the way work-ing processes are structured can have an eect on the representation of energy goals at the local level. According to the comparative case study analysis of Bouwhuis (2016, 43), a matrix structureoriginating a program teamhas more positive eects on energy goals than a categorization by function, where the problem solving remains in the task area of dierent departments. Bouwhuis (2016, 43) reasons that this is because unlike the cate-gorisation[!] by function a matrix structure stimulates interdepartmental cooperation and awareness throughout the organisation[!]. This point already anticipates the relational category of drivers for the energy transition. (4) Vertical competition between local, state, and national governments as well as horizontal competition between various local govern-ments can liberate resources to support transition processes (Jänicke, 2014, 41). (5) The overall political landscape and vertical support are important determining factors (Martin and Coenen,2015;Rohracher and Späth,2014). Higher level policies can enable the action at the local level through governmental incentives and programs (Alle et al., 2017; Mey et al., 2016); but higher level regulations can also signicantly slow down the transition process at lower levels (Faller,2016, 93). (6) The `enabling mode of governing', identied byBulkeley and Kern(2006) captures the strategy of Local Government (LG)s to enable and facilitate local actors to pursue energy-related purposes. (Mey et al., 2016, 34).

Plenty of economic drivers, which inuence a region to take on the transition towards REs, are identied in the literature: (1) Decentralized REs allow concepts of community ownership and nancial citizen participation (Jänicke, 2014; Walker, 2008; Pollin, 2012;

Schreuer and Weismeier-Sammer, 2010; Yildiz, 2014). (2) These concepts are especially

attractive, because they keep the citizens' investments within the own region (Hirschl, 2014; Hirschl et al., 2010; Holstenkamp, 2013; Bryden, 2010). (3) REs oer development possibilities for less auent and/or rural regions (OECD,2012,2006) and can thus help to reduce unemployment (Jänicke, 2014). (4) Increased energy-savings (for example through the energetic remodeling of buildings) helps to reduce energy costs (Denis and Parker, 2009;Hsueh and Yan, 2011; Jänicke, 2014) and can thus be a driver for local action. For the implementation in poorer regions, higher level programs and incentives play a crucial role. (5) The organizational capacity of local authorities, composed of the human and nancial resources available, seems to be a reliable indicator for progress in the transition process (Bouwhuis,2016, 44).

A decentralized energy production based on REs comes with spatial and geographical constrains which are dierent from the once from conventional energy sources. Favor-ing spatial and geographical conditions can thus be a driver for a transition progress. (1) Geographical conditions have an eect on the eciency of renewable power production.

These include for example wind and solar potentials, which determine whether the power production is ecient and protable in a given region (Jänicke, 2014, 41), or a regions location, which inuences the ability to eciently transport the produced energy to the consumer areas. (2) Regional structure and land use shares determine the availability of sites for REs. (3) Additionally, urban structure eects the energy consumption of cities, especially by transport requirements for commuters. Groÿe et al. (2016, 25) identify the interrelations between urban structure and energy [as] [. . . ] a key aspect of [. . . ] urban climate policies..

The explanation above shows, that there is a wide range of preconditions that potentially explain a regions progress in the local energy transition. Yet, there is one recurring aspect in the qualitative case studies: In the end, it comes down to the existence of entrepreneurs that are highly committed to the implementation of sustainability, climate change, and renewable energy policies (Groÿe et al., 2016, 35). Those entrepreneurs vary between the cases and can be identied as local policy-makers (Faller,2016, 93), administrative actors, citizen initiatives (Radtke, 2016) or (community owned) public service providers (Berlo and Wagner,2015, 324), to name the most prominent. Their commitment is based on the strong belief that investing in sustainability, climate change mitigation, and REs is the right path for the region (Groÿe et al., 2016). Whether the policy entrepreneurs are able to translate their beliefs into policies and development seems to highly depend on their ability to mobilize others within the region (Bouwhuis, 2016; Feldho, 2016) as well as to network with higher level actors and other regions that follow a similar path (Kern and Bulkeley,2009). From a network perspective the rst can be understood as an inner-regional network, while the latter presents an inter-inner-regional network.

Relational driversreferring to the networks and the actor constellations at the local

levelhave therefore proven to be crucial in many of the qualitative case studies (see for example Feldho, 2016; Bouwhuis, 2016; Wirth et al., 2013; Faller, 2016). They can be categorized into three dierent types:

(1) Inner-regional networks play a major role for the local transition process. Dierent stakeholders are relevant to local energy policy-making and their interplay determines the progress therein (Faller,2016, 85). Among those stakeholders are local politicians, admin-istrative actors, local residents, (community owned) public service providers, engineers or planners. Inner-regional networks include these key stakeholders into the planning and decision-making process (Bouwhuis, 2016), ensuring that no essential interests are over-looked. Three types of connections are hereby crucial: the inter-organizational relations between the various local administrative organizations (Bouwhuis, 2016), new forms of private-public partnerships to increase engagement of (local) businesses (Feldho, 2016), and the encouragement of citizen participation in local planning (Feldho, 2016). More-over, citizen participation is widely shown to increase the acceptance of renewable energy projects at the local level (Holstenkamp,2013;Rogers et al.,2008;Viardot,2013;Baldinelli et al., 2015). The described inner-regional networks foster trust among its members. In turn, trust is identied as a central driver of success for community based renewable en-ergy projects (Walker et al., 2010).

(2) Seeking relations in an inter-regional network is crucial for the progress in local energy policy-making as well. Connections to higher governmental levels allow on the one hand for an integrated regional planning, which enables ecient planning across county board-ers, and on the other hand they provide important knowledge and advise on how to get funding from governmental nancial and incentive programs. Additionally, networks with like-minded regions help to acquire essential knowledge, for example on best practices (Faller,2016, 93). Those networks build capacities across regional boarders by providing lessons learned to other regions (Feldho, 2016, 273). (3) The actor constellations, that lead to a successful transition path, show substantial dierences. Bottom-up as well as top-down approaches are observed in local energy policy-making. While in some regions the citizens ignite the transition process (Schmid et al., 2016; Sonnberger and Ruddat, 2016), in other regions this ignition is started by local politicians, like strongly commit-ted majors (Faller, 2016, 93). This shows once more, that there is no best practice for all cases, but that it is the unique actor constellation of a county and the degree of the actor's commitmentbased on the beliefs they holdthat determines a county's path in local energy policy-making.

Table 3.2 summarizes the drivers for local energy policy-making discussed above. This section shows how manifold the preconditions and the drivers are that lead to a successful path within the energy transition.Cosmi et al.(2015, 704) propose a Political, Economic, Social, Technical (PEST) analysis, which emphasizes how important it is to take these

Table 3.2: Drivers of Local Energy Policy-Making Political:

ˆ party constellations & government ideology

ˆ local authorities' competencies

ˆ organizational structure of local departments

ˆ vertical competition and horizontal competition

ˆ overall political landscape

ˆ enabling mode of governing Economic:

ˆ community ownership & nancial citizen participation

ˆ keeping value within the own region

ˆ development chances for less auent regions

ˆ energy-savings

ˆ organizational capacity (human and nancial resources) Geographical:

ˆ Geographical conditions

ˆ Regional structure

ˆ Urban structure Relational:

ˆ Inner-regional networks

ˆ Inter-regional networks

ˆ Actor constellations

ˆ Actors' commitment & power to mobilize

regional dierences into account, when dening a sustainable energy strategy for the given region. Only then can the strategy consist of successful and eective measures to solve the identied problems dening suited development strategies. Thereupon, a wide range of practices that reect on the existing local and regional opportunities is empirically identiable (Faller,2016, 86).

While the political, the economic, and the geographical preconditions are widely studied in their respective disciplines, the relational aspects of networks and actor constellations is not per se anchored in any one of them. Yet, as discussed above, actor constellations and networks can have an important impact on the development of the energy transition at the local level and on the policy-making therein. Those actor constellations and networks can be studied through network analysis. Network analysis has become an important part of studying policy-making over the course of the last 30 years (see section4.4). Therefore, this thesis applies a policy network approach to study the relational drivers and their re-lation to a region's progress in local energy policy-making in rural and urban areas more closely, while controlling for the political, the economic, and the geographical drivers as proposed by Cosmi et al.(2015).

But how can the eorts and progress of a region be assessed, while taking the wide range

of preconditions and practices into account? The next section gives an overview over approaches proposed in the literature for assessing regional performance.