The Governance of Innovations in the Energy Sector

Between Adaptation and Exploration

Abstract

The field of electricity supply has slowly evolved over a long period of time. Electricity supply constitutes an example of a large technical system resistant to sudden changes or reorientations. The essential incentives for changes have come from the so called oil-price shocks in the mid ninety-seventies of the last century, the Chernobyl accident and the resulting critical attitude towards nuclear energy in many countries, the liberalization of markets driven forward by the European Commission, discussions about climate change and finally the Fukushima catastrophe. Such external events can lead to changes in governance structures. The standard operating procedure is to have the incumbent actors deal with external challenges in the established way of doing things (structures and actors). We assume that changes in the governance structure are not an immediate reaction to external shocks, but rather these external shocks have to be interpreted, mediated by new, skilled actors and perceived as a chance to see things differently and organize and build coalitions around these new frames. For a successful transformation, a change in the relevant power constellations which supports the incumbent governance structure is required. Processes of change in the end deal with the following question: which actors can achieve what aims under what conditions? The article will analyze four prominent cases in the energy sector to illustrate this point: the governance of the carbon dioxide capture & storage technology in Germany and Norway and the governance of photovoltaics development in Japan and Germany.