Metrics for an accountable energy transition? Legitimating the governance of solar uptake. Issue 114 (August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sareen, Siddharth
• Is Part Of: Geoforum. Issue 114(2020)
• Page Start: 30
• Page End: 39
• Publication Date: 2020-08
• Subjects: Solar energy -- Accountability -- Metrics -- Energy transitions -- Portugal -- Practices of legitimation; Geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; Sciences de la terre -- Périodiques; Géographie -- Périodiques; Géographie humaine -- Périodiques; Aménagement du territoire -- Périodiques; Earth sciences; Geography; Human geography; Regional planning; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.05.018
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0016-7185

Abstract

Highlights: Applies a typology of four practices to the governance of solar uptake in Portugal. The practices of legitimation: discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial. Unpacks accountability relations by tracing legitimation during energy transitions. Empirically shows how actors use metrics to modulate sectoral transition dynamics. Argues that incumbents use reductive metrics to maintain inertia in energy systems. Abstract: 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.