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Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
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Energy Research & Social Science
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss
Original research article
Global environmental politics and energy: Mapping the
research agenda
Robert Falkner ∗
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 18 January 2014
Received in revised form 11 March 2014
Accepted 12 March 2014
Available online 20 March 2014
Keywords:
Global environmental politics
International Relations
Environmental impacts
Sustainability
Global environmental governance
Climate change
Climate policy
a b s t r a c t
Energy is central to the survival and prosperity of human society, which explains the social sciences’
interest in energy production, consumption and distribution. The emergence of the global environmental agenda in the second half of the 20th century gave rise to a distinctive research literature on how
energy systems and global environmental protection are interconnected. The threat of disruptive climate
change, in particular, has thrown the spotlight on the central role that energy plays in shaping the future
relationship between human society and its natural environment. This article provides an overview of
how the study of global environmental politics (GEP) has shaped energy research in the past and how it
contributes to defining the future energy research agenda. It provides a brief review of the emergence
of GEP within the discipline of International Relations. It identifies three core conceptual lenses that are
central to the GEP research agenda: (i) the study of environmental impacts and ecological limits; (ii) the
notions of sustainability and sustainable development; and (iii) the concept of global environmental governance. The article then maps the emerging energy research agenda from a GEP perspective, focused on
climate change as the predominant concern and framing of contemporary GEP scholarship.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Energy is central to the survival and prosperity of human society. It is no surprise, then, that the social sciences consider energy
production, consumption and distribution as a subject worthy of
closer scholarly attention [1]. The emergence of the global environmental agenda in the second half of the 20th century gave rise to
a distinctive research literature on how energy systems and global
environmental protection are interconnected. The threat of disruptive climate change, in particular, has thrown the spotlight on the
central role that energy plays in shaping the future relationship
between human society and its natural environment. As Sovacool put it, ‘[i]f the twentieth century was about energy, then the
twenty-first century could very well be about energy governance
and climate change’ [2].
This article provides an overview of how the study of global
environmental politics has shaped energy research in the past
and how it contributes to defining the future energy research
agenda. The subsequent section (2) reviews the emergence of the
distinctive field of global environmental politics (GEP) within the
discipline of International Relations (IR) and outlines major trends
in the evolution of this field. The next section (3) identifies three
core conceptual lenses that are central to the GEP research agenda:
(i) the study of environmental impacts of human activities and
the ecological limits that the natural environment places on global
economic growth; (ii) the notions of sustainability and sustainable
development, which have informed our thinking on how human
societies can live within the boundaries of local, regional and
global eco-systems; and (iii) the concept of global environmental
governance, which denotes the diverse and complex institutional
arrangements that have been created at the global level in order to
steer human societies in the direction of greater environmental sustainability. Section 4 then maps the emerging research agenda on
energy from a GEP perspective. While this cannot offer a comprehensive depiction of all lines of social science enquiry that currently
connect GEP with energy research, it is hoped that the questions
and issues raised in this section demonstrate the vitality of existing
research and provide some pointers to emerging new questions.
2. The study of global environmental politics
∗ Correspondence to: Department of International Relations, London School of
Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. Tel.: +44 020 7955 6347.
E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.03.008
2214-6296/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The study of global environmental politics is usually conducted
within the social science discipline of International Relations,
R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
though some GEP scholars have been trained and often still work in
related disciplines, such as political science and comparative politics, political economy, environmental economics, geography and
environmental studies. Given its subject matter, GEP is inevitably
multi-disciplinary. It draws on a wide range of social scientific theories and concepts in its effort to develop a better understanding of
the global political dimensions of the relationship between human
societies and their natural environment. The focus in this article is
on GEP more narrowly defined as a subfield of International Relations, though it will become apparent that just as GEP builds on
IR theories and concepts it also seeks to go beyond the theoretical boundaries of IR and integrate a wider range of social scientific
approaches.
GEP first emerged as a distinctive field of study in the 1970s, at
the time when environmental protection was formally established
on the international agenda [3]. Although transboundary environmental issues had featured before in social scientific research and
international affairs commentary [4], it was the UN Conference
on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, which
led IR scholars to pay more systematic attention to the growth in
international environmental policy-making. Following the Stockholm conference, the international community established the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP, 1973), the UN’s first dedicated
body dealing with environmental matters, and negotiated a growing number of important environmental treaties (e.g. Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES), 1973; Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air
Pollution (CLRTAP), 1979).
During the 1980s, various global environmental problems reinforced the need for international cooperation. The volume of
research publications on global environmental politics continued
to expand in this decade, and by the time of the high-profile 1992
‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro (officially known as UN Conference
on Environment and Development–UNCED) a more fully formed
sub-discipline had emerged with its own journals (Global Environmental Change, from 1990; International Environmental Affairs,
1991–1998) and a growing number of GEP textbooks [5]. By this
time, GEP research had begun to address the ever-growing number of transboundary environmental problems, from acid rain to
marine pollution, biodiversity loss, toxic waste trade and ozone
layer depletion. Energy was implicated in some of these issues (e.g.
sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants) but rarely featured as
a separate research topic in the GEP literature.
Scholarship on global environmental politics flourished during
the 1990s as it moved from the analysis of specific environmental
policy issues to more systematic explanations of how international
society dealt with environmental issues. Much of this literature
built on theoretical insights from liberal institutionalism in IR, a
theoretical tradition that views states as rational, self-interested,
actors that create international institutions in order to manage
global collective action problems [6]. In particular, institutionalist
approaches, such as regime theory, played a prominent role in unifying the sprawling GEP literature around a conceptual core [7].
With its focus on the “principles, norms, rules and decision-making
procedures” [8] that govern institutionalised cooperation in given
issue areas, regime theory offered a powerful tool for analysing
the myriad environmental treaties and institutions that had come
into existence. The initial focus was on identifying the factors that
explain successful environmental regime creation, such as power
asymmetry, political leadership or scientific knowledge [9]. Only
later did scholars pay great attention to the factors that influence
the effectiveness of environmental regimes [10]. This dual concern for the global politics of regime creation and the institutional
effects of environmental policy-making still characterises important strands of the contemporary GEP research agenda.
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Although liberal institutionalism also bequeathed a certain
state-centric perspective on the study of environmental regimes,
GEP scholarship was among the first sub-fields of IR to pay greater
attention to the role of nonstate actors in global governance. Unsurprisingly perhaps in a global policy domain that scientists and
environmental campaigners had helped to establish [11], nonstate
actors are recognised to play important roles, be it as pressure
groups and lobbyists, norm entrepreneurs and knowledge brokers,
or technical experts and information providers. We now have a
substantial conceptual as well as empirical literature on the specific contribution that scientists [12], NGOs [13] and business [14]
make to global environmental policy-making.
By the early 2000s, the dominant focus on inter-governmental
regimes had given way to a more broadly defined interest in global
environmental governance, which includes new forms of transnational and private governance [15]. Reflecting the impact of a
diffusion of power and authority in the contemporary international
system, the concept of global governance re-focused attention to
the increasingly diverse forms and sources of global rules and
norms. GEP scholars have been at the forefront of this conceptual
shift, analysing the proliferation of private environmental governance mechanisms [16], such as corporate social responsibility
[17], public–private partnerships [18] and certification schemes
[19].
More recently, GEP scholarship has also developed closer links
with the IR subfield of International Political Economy (IPE) [20],
which is concerned with the interaction between political and
economic factors in International Relations, particularly in international trade, finance and production. Cross-fertilisation of GEP
and IPE was influenced in part by the growing recognition among
scholars and policy-makers that the linkages between environmental and economic cooperation need to be strengthened in order to
tackle complex global problems, such as climate change and biodiversity. Many of the recent UN environment summits, for example,
have stressed the importance of integrating global economic and
environmental policy. Some GEP scholars have also engaged with
IPE approaches in order to direct attention away from international regimes to the more deep-rooted constraints that the global
economy places on global environmental protection. As Clapp and
Helleiner argue, GEP suffered in the past from ‘a relative neglect
of the environmental implications of larger structural trends in the
international political economy’, such as ‘the globalization of international financial markets; the rise of newly powerful states in the
global economy; and the recent emergence of high and volatile
commodity prices’ [21]. An IPE perspective forces GEP scholarship
to look more broadly at the links between the main driving forces
of economic globalisation and global ecological trends. One of the
consequences of this shift is, in a sense, a return to some of the
themes and concerns that defined environmental scholarship in
the 1970s, including resource scarcity and the important role that
energy plays in the global economy [22].
One of the key factors that has brought together GEP and energy
research is the global threat of climate change. The adoption of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992
and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 marked the beginning of a trend
that has gradually seen climate change emerge as the dominant
environmental concern in international affairs, subsuming many
other environmental issues, such as air pollution, desertification
and deforestation. The reasons for this are manifold. For one, virtually all forms of economic activity are implicated in producing
the emissions that contribute to global warming: from energy production and consumption to industrial manufacturing, agriculture,
land use changes and transport. Furthermore, a warming climate is
going to have disruptive effects on a wide range of global, regional
and local eco-systems, in the form of ocean acidification, melting
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R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
of glaciers and polar ice caps, rising sea levels, more disruptive
weather patterns, greater water stress in arid regions, deforestation and habitat loss, among others. Climate change has, therefore,
become a cipher for a global ecological crisis that calls into question
the long-term sustainability of existing economic trends, particularly those that concern energy production and consumption.
3. Core concepts in global environmental politics
The multi-disciplinary nature of GEP scholarship makes it is difficult to identify a clear set of theories and concepts that define
this sub-discipline. In what follows, I am focusing on three conceptual lenses that have played an influential role in directing the
evolution of GEP. It goes without saying that this specific focus cannot claim to capture all major approaches and perspectives in GEP.
However, the three concepts below capture three major analytical perspectives that GEP scholars have applied to energy research.
The first such conceptual lens builds on the notion of ecological
impacts and limits; the second is based on the notion of sustainability and related concepts, such as sustainable development and
green growth; and the third is built around the notion of global
environmental governance. This section briefly introduces each of
these conceptual lenses and illustrates how they relate to energy
research.
3.1. Environmental impacts and ecological limits
One of the core concerns of the GEP literature has been to
advance an understanding of the different ways in which societies impact on the global environment and the global political
efforts to reduce or manage these impacts. The early environmental
debate in the 1960s and 1970s was strongly influenced by neoMalthusian ideas about the limited carrying capacity of the planet.
Resource scarcity and ecological limits to growth became hotly
debated topics that also framed some of the early GEP research literature, including on energy. Some of the most influential scholars
of that time stressed the Earth’s limited ability to sustain a constantly growing human population with ever increasing demand
for resources [23]. In this view, nature places absolute limits on the
growth of economic activity, including the consumption of nonrenewable energy sources, and these limits have to be respected
to avert a global crisis. Although the ‘limits to growth’ argument
eventually gave way to a different and more optimistic framing of
the relationship between global ecology and the global economy,
in the form of sustainable development discourse (see below), neoMalthusian fears continue to reverberate in some GEP scholarship
today and find an echo in debates on limited energy sources (e.g.
peak oil) and ecological resilience in energy systems [24].
While research on the ecological limits to growth was located
at the macro level, focused on the systemic interdependencies
between the global environment and the global economy, much
GEP scholarship has focused on environmental impacts at the
micro level. Inspired by the pioneering work of biologists, such as
Rachel Carson, who brought the dangers of the growing pesticide
and chemicals use to the attention of a wider public, GEP scholars
have analysed various forms of environmental degradation and
the global political efforts to manage them. These include, for
example, SO2 and NOx emissions from power plants that cause
acid rain in distant locations; toxic waste that is produced in
developed countries but exported to poorer countries with often
laxer environmental regulations; and illegal timber trade that
contributes to rainforest destruction in tropical regions [25]. The
distinctive contribution that GEP has made to the study of such
transnational environmental impacts is to place their occurrence
in a global political context and examine the factors that determine
the success or failure of global political responses.
It is through this ‘environmental impacts’ lens that GEP scholars
have also examined energy-related questions. The environmental
externalities of energy production, transport and consumption can
be felt at a local level and across national borders: Strip-mining of
coal usually involves the removal of vast amounts of soil and largescale deforestation. Underground coal mining can release toxic
substances into the soil and groundwater. Oil drilling can lead to
accidental oil spills that pollute ground water, rivers and oceans.
Gas drilling, particularly in the form of hydraulic fracturing, can
lead to air pollution and ground water and surface contamination
with toxic chemicals. Much of the research literature has focused
on conditions in developing countries where safety regulations are
often weaker or non-existent, or are simply not being enforced [26].
More recently, the environmental safety of fossil fuel production in
industrialised countries has come under renewed critical scrutiny,
as oil and gas companies are pushing into more challenging and
environmentally sensitive areas, such as the Arctic region and deep
oceans [27].
Other environmental impacts of energy are more distinctly
global in nature. The international shipment of crude oil on tankers,
for example, carries the risk of marine pollution from accidental
spills. GEP research has highlighted the importance of international
standard-setting to minimising such risks, e.g. through the creation
of international environmental regimes, such as MARPOL [28]. By
far the biggest global environmental threat comes in the form of the
greenhouse gases emitted during the production and consumption
of fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas based energy sources are the single
largest contributor to manmade climate change, and it is this form
of environmental externality that has moved centre stage in recent
GEP scholarship (more on this below).
3.2. Sustainability, sustainable development and green growth
‘Sustainability’ is an ecological concept that has gained popularity in GEP scholarship since the 1980s and now serves as a major
conceptual lens, with important consequences for energy-related
research. In its original form, the term ‘sustainable’ describes ecological systems that are able to survive and maintain their diversity
over time. Applied to global environmental politics, sustainability
serves both as a goal for global political action, in terms of maintaining sustainable global eco-systems, and as a criterion for assessing
the success of global environmental action. The term equips the
social scientific study of environmental problems with a systemlevel perspective and renders it sensitive to the deep and often
hidden interdependencies that characterise global eco-systems. It
injects a strong sense of spatial and temporal change as well as
dynamic uncertainty into the often static, equilibrium-based perspectives of the social sciences [29].
Sustainability also entered the international policy discourse in
the 1980s, in the form of the ‘sustainable development’ concept.
As defined by the Brundtland Commission, sustainable development is ‘development that meets the needs of the present, without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs’ [30]. The Brundtland Report served as the intellectual foundation for the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’, which adopted the concept
as a guiding principle for international environmental cooperation.
At a basic level, sustainable development deals with the complex interactions between global environment, economic growth
and social development. In contrast to the dichotomous framing
of the economy-ecology relationship within the ‘limits to growth’
paradigm, it suggests a fundamental compatibility of environmental sustainability and economic development, and of the interests
of current and those of future generations. It asserts that global
R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
politics needs to find the right balance between these competing
policy objectives [31].
In more recent years, the dominance of the sustainable development discourse has been challenged by the closely related concepts
of ‘green growth and ‘green economy’. Simply put, the concept
of green growth refers to ‘economic growth which also achieves
significant environmental protection’, with the ‘significant’ referring to ‘a level of environmental protection which is not being met
by current or “business-as-usual” patterns of growth’ [32]. Both
terms rose to prominence in scholarly and policy debates especially in the run-up to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable
Development in 2012, which was meant to take stock of twenty
years of sustainable development practice. Several international
organisations, from UNEP to the World Bank and the OECD, committed themselves to a global green growth strategy. UNEP’s 2011
report Towards a Green Economy, which played a key role in informing debates at the Rio+20 meeting, advocated a set of economic
policies that would promote sustainability and growth objectives
through investment in key sectors, such as energy, water and
agriculture [33]. In many ways, ‘green growth’ shares the same
intellectual premises with ‘sustainable development’: the need to
promote economic prosperity while maintaining a healthy natural
environment, and the fundamental compatibility of economic and
environmental objectives. But whereas sustainable development
has a more wide-ranging focus involving not just environmental
but also social objectives – and which some see as a recipe for constraining economic growth – green growth arguments emphasise
more unequivocally the need to stimulate economic growth while
insisting that environmental protection, if crafted carefully, can
actually be a source of growth. The shift in emphasis thus signals a
narrowing of the perspective developing an economic strategy for
environmentally responsible growth, and towards a political discourse that makes environmental policies palatable to the public
in the fiscally constrained post-financial crisis era [34].
The environmental sustainability of global energy systems has
become a key concern in GEP largely due to the fact that energy
production and consumption account for roughly two thirds of all
greenhouse gas emissions [35]. As the International Energy Agency
stated in 2009, ‘energy is at the heart of the [climate] problem
and so must be integral to the solution’ [36]. De-carbonising global
energy supply and consumption has thus become one of the main
global imperatives that shape global energy policy, alongside the
traditional concerns of energy security and energy poverty [37]. But
given the centrality of fossil fuels to the functioning of the global
economy, a serious de-carbonisation programme will require an
energy transition from the current system to a new, low-carbon,
future. The global energy system has already undergone several
such transitions since the beginning of the industrial revolution:
from an early system based on coal and steam power to a second one powered by the internal combustion engine and a third
one in which gas turbines have played a larger role [38]. Global
climate policy is attempting to produce another such energy transition, away from fossil fuels towards low-carbon energy solutions,
such as hydro-electric, nuclear, wind and solar. But past energy
research shows that large-scale energy transitions are of an ‘inherently gradual nature’, taking decades to materialise, and that any
faster pace of energy transition requires a concerted political and
financial effort on a global scale [39].
191
environmental protection. It builds on the notion of ‘governance’
as a broadly conceived form of regulation, or steering, which does
not necessarily depend on the existence of formal international
authority but can also arise from private or hybrid sources of global
authority. ‘Global governance’ is thus an empirically more encompassing concept than ‘international regimes’. It does not privilege
states or state-centric forms of governance but treats them as one
source of global regulation among many. The 1995 UN Commission
on Global Governance defined the concept in terms that are still
widely quoted today: it is ‘the sum of the many ways individuals
and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs.
It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and co-operative action may be taken.
It includes formal institutions . . . as well as informal arrangements
that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be
in their interest’ [40].
While there is no uniformly accepted definition of global
environmental governance, most GEP research envisages it as
multi-level and multi-actor governance based on complex interactions between actors operating at different levels across the
domestic-international divide. Scholars have identified a number
of diverse actors that can play a relevant role, from sub-national
actors (e.g. municipalities, cities and regional bodies) to business
actors and civil society groups. Insofar as global governance is about
steering human society into a more sustainable future, one that
allows it to prevent, mitigate and adapt to large-scale environmental change, it has also been referred to as ‘earth system governance’,
a term that denotes the planetary scale and importance of this
emerging governance system [41].
If global governance activities are not confined to state-centric
realms, then the relationship between state and nonstate actors in
this increasingly complex web of global relations deserves to be
examined more closely. One question concerns the perceived shift
in authority and power from public to private authorities. Some
scholars have suggested that private actors are filling global governance gaps and are replacing states as sources of global steering.
Others have argued that states retain an important function by
stimulating and supporting private governance, and that global
governance operates in the ‘shadow of hierarchy’ [42]. A more
recent strand of research suggests that states and state-centric
international organisations could play a more important role in
‘orchestrating’ private environmental governance in order better to
align private actors with public policy objectives and international
institutions [43].
Another strand of research has focused on questions of coherence versus disintegration in complex governance systems. Some
scholars have identified ‘regime complexes’ in policy fields (e.g.
climate change) that are unlikely to be integrated into a more
centralised core regime, for reasons to do with issue complexity
and interest diversity [44]. In such contexts, managing institutional interplay and avoiding conflict between competing actors
and institutions becomes a key strategic priority [45]. Others
are working with the conceptual frame of ‘governance fragmentation’ to identify cases of growing segmentation of global
policy-making. Fragmented global governance is plagued by discontinuities between international, regional, national and local
environmental politics and an uneven form of international institutionalisation across different policy fields, which may lead to
suboptimal governance outcomes [46].
3.3. Global environmental governance
The third conceptual lens that GEP research has advanced is that
of global environmental governance. The concept is now widely
used to analyse a wide range of formal and informal arrangements
that state and nonstate actors engage in, with a view to promoting
4. Global environmental politics and the new energy
research agenda
Having reviewed the growth of global environmental politics
as a sub-discipline in IR and discussed its main conceptual lenses,
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R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
this section sketches the emerging GEP research agenda for global
energy. This involves reflections on the current state of research
and identification of emerging research questions that reflect
the increasing confluence of global environmental and energy
research. Admittedly, this overview cannot hope to capture the
rich variety of the constantly expanding research landscape. But
it is hoped that it will identify some of the most important lines of
inquiry at the interface of GEP and energy research.
4.1. Addressing the energy trilemma
It has become commonplace in environmental research to argue
that ‘. . .climate change mitigation and energy policy are inextricably interlinked’ [47]. How to reduce energy-based emissions of
greenhouse gases is widely recognised as an overriding policy priority for the 21st century, and researchers now routinely define
the global energy agenda as a ‘trilemma’: how to meet the three
demands of securing energy supply, protecting the global climate
and reducing energy poverty. As with all such policy trilemmas, the
key question for social science research is how to promote a better
understanding of the interconnections between these three global
policy goals. This involves at least three sets of questions: First, to
what extent, and under what circumstances, do these goals complement each other? For example, international institutions, such
as the IEA and OECD, have repeatedly pointed out that reducing fossil fuel subsidies would not only help reduce carbon emissions but
also serve energy security interests, by increasing the incentives for
enhanced energy efficiency and promoting a switch to alternative
energy sources including renewables. Second, when and why do
the three goals conflict, and how can such conflicts be mitigated?
To stay with the same example, reducing fossil fuel subsidies may
promote energy security and climate change mitigation, but may
conflict with the goal of widening access to energy, particularly as
poorer communities in society are often dependent on subsidised
energy supply [48]. Third, what possibilities exist to reduce the
trade-offs between reducing energy poverty and reducing greenhouse gas emissions [49], or between energy security and climate
protection? Such questions have been raised before but the connections between potentially competing policy goals have not been
given adequate attention in the research literature [50].
How to achieve the long-term environmental sustainability of
the global energy system remains, of course, the core research
interest from a GEP perspective. As discussed above, energy production and use produce a wide variety of environmental impacts,
on the local environment, rivers and oceans, and these will continue
to be on the future research agenda. But given the growing urgency
to act on climate change and the central importance of reducing of
energy-related emissions, it is fair to conclude that de-carbonising
energy will be the overriding concern in future research.
4.2. Optimising climate policy instruments
Much research has been devoted to analysing individual policy
instruments for de-carbonising global energy systems. An array of
instruments is available to governments, but they are used in different combinations and with varying degrees of success. As more
countries step up their efforts to engineer a transition away from
fossil fuels, further research will need to focus on identifying the
factors that determine the effectiveness of specific instruments,
within specific country contexts, but also in a comparative perspective.
One of the instruments that have gained in popularity in recent
years is emissions trading. Creating a market for carbon that allows
companies to choose between reducing their own emissions and
purchasing other companies’ emission permits is widely held to
be the best instrument to reduce the costs of climate policy. By
allowing the market mechanism to guide the allocation of investment in emission reductions, such schemes are said to produce a
higher degree of economic efficiency than fixed regulatory standards or mandates [51]. GEP studies have sought to explain the
growing popularity of emissions trading and how this policy instrument spread from the European Union – originally an opponent of
emissions trading – to other industrialised countries. Meckling, for
example, has shown that there is a distinctive political economy
behind the rise of emissions trading, in the form of transnational
business alliances that have been closely involved in developing
and then promoting this policy instrument [52].
As emissions trading is now also spreading to emerging
economies, GEP researchers will need to provide more comprehensive explanations of the diffusion of this instrument beyond
the OECD world [53]. At the same time, some research points to
significant limitations of emissions trading schemes, most notably
the distorting effects of market power, high transaction costs and
limited innovation effects [54]. Indeed, the record of the world’s
largest scheme, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, is rather mixed.
On the one hand, the EU ETS can be considered a political success
as major business groups broadly support it. On the other hand, the
European carbon market has gone through high price volatility, and
the carbon price has fallen to such an extent in recent years that
its effect on the de-carbonisation of the European energy sector is
increasingly negligible [55].
The experience with emissions trading thus raises several
research questions from a GEP perspective: Is emissions trading a politically expedient but environmentally insignificant tool,
with only limited effects on low-carbon innovation and energy decarbonisation? What explains the gradual diffusion of emissions
trading policies from Europe to other countries, in North America
but also in Asia, and what barriers exist that prevent diffusion to
other countries? Should emissions trading continue to gain more
supporters, can the emerging patchwork of regional, national and
transnational trading schemes be integrated, or at least coordinated, so that better coherence and synergy can be achieved across
different schemes? [56].
Another set of policy instruments is fiscal in nature and involves
either the taxation of carbon emissions or carbon content in energy
or subsidies for low-carbon energy technologies. Taxation is a well
established tool for internalising environmental externalities but
has been met with considerable opposition where governments
have sought to introduce it as a way of encouraging a switch to
renewable energy sources. Governments also use subsidies for lowcarbon solutions in order to promote greater energy efficiency in
industry (to fund investment programmes) or among consumers
(e.g. trading in of old cars for more fuel-efficient newer models).
Unsurprisingly, they have proved popular with those businesses
and consumers that directly benefit from them. Fiscal incentives are
particularly important for start-up companies in the renewables
sector, which may find it difficult to raise sufficient financing for
their investment plans [57]. However, policies based on generous
subsidies are difficult to sustain in fiscally constrained times, and
the uncertainty over the viability of such spending programmes is
one factor that is holding back long-term investors.
Debate continues on the contribution that fiscal policy can make
to the de-carbonisation of energy, and more research needs to be
conducted on the full panoply of fiscal instruments available to
governments, particularly in times of austerity [58]. Environmental
economists have cast doubt on how useful subsidies are. As Gunningham notes, there is ‘a mixed picture of the value of subsidies
in delivering energy efficiency and renewable energy goals’ [59].
What is more, in many countries the main problem is not the failure of subsidies for renewables but the persistence of subsidies
R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
for fossil fuels. Such subsidies exist because governments chose
to support and economically important energy sector (e.g. coal in
Germany), exempt certain sectors from fuel tax (e.g. farmers in the
US) or lower the price of energy for consumers (in many developing countries). The IEA estimates that such subsidies of fossil fuels
led to ‘wasteful consumption that totalled $312 billion’ in 2009
[60]. Recognition is growing in international policy circles that such
harmful subsidies need to be curtailed. The important question for
GEP research is whether international cooperation can help reduce
the incentives for governments to continue to subsidise harmful
fossil fuel use [61].
Other policy instruments that have received growing attention
in the GEP literature include feed-in tariffs for renewable energy,
regulatory standards that prescribe energy efficiency levels, and
renewable energy mandates that prescribe a certain proportion
of renewable energy usage. Feed-in tariffs have played an important role in driving up investment in renewable energy production,
most prominently as part of Germany’s Energiewende policy. By
offering producers of renewable energy access to the electricity
grid and guaranteeing a long-term price often above market rates,
such feed-in tariffs create incentives and long-term certainty for
investors in the renewables sector. The policy instrument has now
been adopted by over 60 countries and is seen by some as a successful instrument, though other scholars question its economic
efficiency [62]. Further comparative studies are needed to establish the right conditions for the successful implementation of such
innovative policy instruments.
Energy research has already created a solid knowledge base
about the economic and technical aspects of individual policy
instruments that promote de-carbonisation, but GEP research in
particular is well placed to add a comparative and global perspective. In particular, research needs to focus more on identifying
the best policy mixes within country and region-specific contexts. It needs to move beyond national and regionally oriented
studies to consider the role of informal coordination and formal
cooperation at the international level, in terms of harmonizing
national approaches, reducing friction between them, and stimulating cross-national learning and diffusion effects. Finally, research
will need to consider not only the specific benefits and costs of
particular policy choices but also their wider systemic effects, in
particular with regard to unintended consequences for global environmental sustainability. As can be seen from the recent debate on
the EU’s biofuels policy, a singular focus on a narrowly defined decarbonisation goal had to be revised after it transpired that the
biofuels mandate created demand for biofuels production in environmentally sensitive areas, such as tropical rainforests, which in
turn stimulated deforestation and related higher carbon dioxide
releases into the atmosphere [63].
193
not spread unless countries develop sufficiently dense networks
of electric charging points. Financing the low-carbon energy transition is thus about more than just supporting new technologies;
it extends to funding entire system and infrastructure changes in
the public and private sector, involving major institutional adjustments [65].
Unsurprisingly, therefore, most experts point out that decarbonising energy systems worldwide will require a phenomenally
large investment effort. The International Energy Agency estimates
that renewable energy subsidies alone, which were $88 billion in
2011, need to rise to almost $240 billion by 2035 if the world
is to limit global warming to the internationally agreed target of
2 ◦ C [66]. The public sector will have to play a central role in this,
but it is clear that private investment flows will also need to be
mobilised to achieve the required level of investment [67]. Much
of the funding effort will be made at the national level as energy
policy remains a predominantly national policy domain. In the past,
OECD countries have been at the forefront of financing low-carbon
technologies, but emerging economies are set to play a more prominent role in the future. China, in particular, has emerged as a major
source of growth of wind and solar energy markets, both as a producer of solar panels and wind turbines and as a site for renewable
energy production. Future research will need to consider the global
changes in the public provision on energy investment as emerging
economies become major investors in energy systems, not least to
fund their rapidly rising energy demand.
The public sector will undoubtedly play a key role in funding
large infrastructure projects, but much of the global finance for
energy and climate mitigation will have to come from the private
sector. GEP research on climate finance has pointed to the growing
role of the private sector in all areas of energy-related investment [68]. The contours of this emerging field of global finance
are still unclear and many questions remain about the distribution
of funding and governance roles between public and private actors.
Initial research suggests that, as Newell argues, ‘there is a huge gap
between the expectations of what private energy finance should
deliver in terms of tackling energy poverty and climate change in
particular, and the weak governance systems in place to mobilise,
channel and distribute that finance to where it is most needed’
[69]. In a field that is likely to be characterised by intense interaction between public and private actors, future research will need to
pay closer attention to the respective capacities of these actors as
well as their limits; the contribution that global governance mechanisms can play to promote better synergies; and challenges that
existing governance institutions face in terms of their continued
legitimacy in a highly contested political environment.
4.4. Strengthening global energy governance
4.3. Financing the low-carbon energy transition
As the above discussion has shown, one of the core objectives of
climate-related energy policy is to mobilise large-scale investment
in low-carbon technologies. This concerns a wide range of investment activities, from the funding of research and development of
new low-carbon alternatives (e.g. carbon capture and storage) [64]
to the creation of market opportunities for established renewable
energy solutions. But the policy challenge goes beyond promoting
specific technologies and energy sources. It also concerns investment in large-scale changes to public and private infrastructure,
including transport and energy networks, industrial processes and
urban environments. As is widely recognised in the energy research
literature, increasing the share of low-carbon energy sources will
require systemic changes to electricity networks, e.g. through the
introduction of smart grids, just as the use of electric cars will
It is only recently that energy research has started to address
global governance questions in a more systematic fashion, and
more research is needed on how states, international organisations
and transnational actors are interacting to form new governance
networks and institutions [70]. GEP scholars have identified a clear
demand for greater global policy coordination: international cooperation is needed, to facilitate a more coordinated use of scarce
resources that are to be invested in green energy technologies
and the low-carbon energy transition; to facilitate the transfer
of green energy technologies across national borders, especially
from developed to developing countries, which may require dealing with intellectual property constraints and other trade-related
barriers that may prohibit such transfers; and to provide developing countries with international aid to meet their investment needs
as part of a global low-carbon energy transition.
194
R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
Existing research has already given us a good sense of the
underdeveloped and highly fragmented nature of global energy
governance. Most existing energy institutions exist outside the
United Nations and tend to be set up along non-universal lines,
representing partial interests, such as those of energy exporters
(e.g. OPEC) or importers (e.g. IEA) [71]. From a global perspective,
none of the three main concerns of the energy trilemma – energy
security, energy access, and climate change – are adequately dealt
with by any of the existing institutions [72], and while good studies exist on individual elements of global energy governance, the
interrelationships between the various components of the energy
governance patchwork are as yet only poorly understood. A few
scholars have begun to map the global energy governance field,
though this is only the beginning of what is likely to become a
larger and more diverse research field [73].
Apart from developing a better understanding of global energy
governance narrowly defined, scholars will also need to consider
the relationships that are growing up between energy institutions and other global governance realms. From a GEP perspective,
the most important link is between global energy and climate
governance, and this topic is beginning to be researched more
systematically [74]. In the past, energy and climate governance
developed along two separate tracks but these are now becoming
inexorably entwined. Increasingly, the various bodies and regimes
associated with the UNFCCC are having an impact on energy policy
around the world. Failure to agree a comprehensive and legally
binding post-Kyoto climate treaty may have so far limited this
impact [75], but ongoing negotiations on a climate treaty may
well lead to an even closer link between emerging climate governance and global energy. Some researchers even speculate that,
as Dubash and Florini have argued, a ‘comprehensive global climate agreement organised around explicit national carbon caps
would be transformative and become a de facto global energy governance regime’ [76]. But even if such a global accord cannot be
negotiated, the growth in alternative climate governance mechanisms surrounding the UNFCCC points to an ever greater role for
climate policy institutions in directing future energy trends. Future
research will therefore need to consider how these two governance
systems interact. Can the UNFCCC and its existing instruments
(e.g. Clean Development Mechanism) [77] play a larger and more
effective role in directing investment towards low-carbon energy
solutions? Could, for example, the new Technology Mechanism
that was agreed at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference facilitate greater diffusion of low-carbon technologies? Research will
also need to consider the response of energy governance institutions to the growing enmeshment with global climate policy. How,
and to what extent, will these institutions respond to growing
demands to integrate climate policy objectives into their operations?
Apart from the UNFCCC and its core instruments, a range of other
international institutions exist that increasingly impinge on energy
governance. Some have only recently been created (e.g. International Renewable Energy Agency – IRENA) while others have been
in existence for some time but are increasingly performing energyrelated governance functions (e.g. World Bank; UN summits on
sustainable development) [78]. Of the newly created institutions,
IRENA is seen by some as a successful example of re-orienting
global energy governance towards greater environmental sustainability. Others, however, are more critical in their assessment. With
a limited budget of only $28 million per year, a narrow focus on
capacity building and technical support and potential policy overlap and institutional rivalry with the International Energy Agency,
it remains to be seen whether this surprising case of institutional
innovation can have the impact on energy policy that is expected
of it [79].
Other international institutions are also expanding their governance role for energy. The World Bank and regional multilateral
development banks have adopted comprehensive environmental
objectives for the lending activities that increasingly affect energyrelated investment projects in developing countries. The World
Bank also maintains several special lending and investment facilities that are promoting, among other objectives, climate-related
upgrades of energy systems. These include Climate Investments
Funds (CIFs), which have significantly increased public funding
for climate protection; the Clean Technology Fund, which offers
concessional loans for low carbon technologies; and the Strategic
Climate Fund for scaling-up of renewable energy [80]. As multilateral development banks increase their energy-related lending
through such instruments, their role in shaping future energy
trends deserves to be taken more seriously in scholarly research.
There are also a growing number of global political forums that
address energy-related policy questions, even if they usually lack
the institutional support and financial clout of more formal international organisations. The Major Economies Forum, first launched
by President Bush in 2007 and continued in modified form by
President Obama, brings together 17 major economies from the
developed and developing world, with exclusive focus on climate
and energy issues. The G-8 and the G-20 summits have held discussions on energy and climate change, often aimed at political
pledges, such as the G20 agreement in 2010 to phase out fossil
fuel subsidies in the medium term. Can such forums make a significant contribution to global energy governance, beyond defining
internationally agreed policy objectives?
The disjointed and uneven global governance system for energy
thus raises important questions for future research: Can existing
weaknesses of the decentralised governance architecture be overcome through the creation of new, and integration of existing,
institutions? Or is it ‘unlikely that a coherent energy regime will be
constructed over the next few decades’, as some scholars suggest?
[81]. Could global market mechanisms offer a realistic alternative? Some scholars have pointed out that markets, if supported
by appropriate institutions, may produce some of the solutions to
global energy problems [82]. But while this may help with energy
security concerns, it is far from clear whether markets can also
steer global energy systems towards greater environmental sustainability, particularly in the short time scale required to maintain
climate stability? [83].
Increasingly, GEP scholars point to the growing importance of
transnational governance networks involving non-state actors.
Some of these already exist in the energy field, others are emerging
and many more are likely to be created in the future. Scholars
have begun to identify relevant actors and networks [84], but
more research is needed on mapping this diffuse and often underresearched field. Transnational energy governance can take on
many forms. It exists where private actors regulate themselves,
within or across industrial sectors. It may involve partnerships
between firms and other actors, be it states or civil society groups.
Other initiatives involve the promotion of transparency and
accountability standards in a given industry or the establishment
of a formal certification scheme with third-party monitoring.
For example, the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg in 2002 led to the creation of a wide range of
public–private partnerships, also known as Type II partnerships. Of
the 340 partnerships registered with UNCSD in early 2012, 46 had
a primary focus on energy issues [85]. Transnational governance is
promoting the norm of carbon emissions disclosure in the energy
sector. Global initiatives, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project,
Investors Network on Climate Risk, Joint Oil Data Initiative, Global
Reporting Initiative and Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, are all beginning to affect energy producing and consuming
R. Falkner / Energy Research & Social Science 1 (2014) 188–197
companies and the investors that are funding them [86]. But while
we now have a growing body of literature on the emergence
of such transnational governance initiatives, future research is
needed to identify the factors that make them effective tools of
energy governance.
More research also needs to focus on the interactions between
different global governance institutions, particularly those that
straddle the public–private divide. If indeed the emerging global
energy governance system is ‘chaotic, incoherent, fragmented,
incomplete, illogical or inefficient’ [87], then it will be of critical importance to understand how the institutional patchwork
can be made to work and how greater synergies between different institutions and initiatives can be promoted. Zelli, Pattberg
et al. have made an initial attempt to map the institutional linkages between the governance components of the energy-climate
complex [88]. Their use of Stokke’s notion of utilitarian, ideational
and normative interlinkages is a useful way to categorise different
types of relationships [89], though more conceptual and empirical work is needed to take this agenda forward and furnish it
with more detailed empirical studies. Abbott has approached this
question from a different angle and investigated the role that
public actors can play in furthering the development of private
governance approaches, thereby ensuring at least some level of
coherence between public and private governance [90]. This concept of ‘orchestration’ ought to be applied more widely to the study
of public–private interactions in global energy governance.
In sum, the emergence of an increasingly complex governance architecture for energy raises important questions for future
research, about how the different agendas of various institutions
and actors can be brought together, and how strategic priorities
can be agreed at the global level between as many elements of
global energy governance as possible; about the implications of the
proliferation of actors and institutions with governance roles for
their claims to international legitimacy and authority; about how
to minimise the negative consequences of institutional competition while promoting a certain degree of policy and institutional
experimentation; and about how the usually scarce resources that
are scattered across the energy governance landscape can be used
more effectively.
5. Conclusions
As the discussion in this article has shown, the rise of global
environmental politics as a sub-discipline of International Relations has had a discernible and lasting impact on energy research. It
has established questions about environmental impacts, sustainability and global governance at the heart of the energy research
agenda. Concerns about climate change, in particular, have given
greater urgency to the GEP-oriented study of global energy. As a
result of the gradual merging of these two research fields, climate
stability is now widely recognised as one of the three main global
concerns that guide research into the future of the world’s energy
systems.
Starting in the early 1970s, GEP has investigated the many
ways in which energy production, use and distribution can cause
environmental degradation, be it in a local or global context. GEP
scholars have highlighted the polluting effects of fossil fuel mining, transport and consumption, and examined the international
community’s political response to such forms of energy-related
pollution. This research continues today and remains an important
lens through which GEP scholars view energy-related questions.
The early environmental debate was strongly influenced by neoMalthusian fears about the Earth’s limited resource base (including
energy) and the limits that a fixed natural capital placed on the
195
expansion of the global economy. Even though such a ‘limits to
growth’ perspective has since given way to a more optimistic framing of the debate in the form of the sustainable development and
green growth discourses, fears about the constraints that limited
resource and energy supply impose on human society’s expansion
continue to reverberate today.
Climate change eventually came to dominate energy-related
GEP scholarship from the 1990s onwards. Because fossil fuel
production and consumption is the largest contributor to the manmade global warming trend, any attempt to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions will inevitably have to consider the possibilities
of a global energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards
renewables. A sizeable literature now exists on low-carbon energy
technologies and energy transitions, to which GEP has added a
distinctive focus on the global governance of this switch to a
low-carbon energy future. GEP scholars have begun to investigate the emerging global governance architecture for climate and
energy, which is decentralised, incoherent, uneven and weak. More
research is needed on how to deal with the many problems that
render global climate and energy governance ineffective, including institutional fragmentation, competition and overlap, lack of
authority, weakness of funding and concerns about institutional
legitimacy.
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