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2016 | Buch

Governing Sustainable Energies in China

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This book examines sustainable energy development in China, a non-liberal state, as a counterexample to conventional wisdom that effective policy outcomes are premised on the basis of decentralized governance. The use of sustainable energies as part of the solution for stabilising global warming has been promoted in industrialised countries for the past three decades. In the last ten years, China has expanded its renewable energy capacity with unprecedented speed and breadth. This phenomenon seems to contradict the principle of orthodox environmental governance, in which stakeholder participation is deemed a necessary condition for effective policy outcomes. Based upon policy documents, news report and interviews with 32 policy makers, business leaders, and NGO practitioners in selected subnational governments, this book examines the politics of sustainable energy in China. It engages debates over the relationships among democratic prioritisation, environmental protection, and economic empowerment, arguing that China’s quasi-corporatist model in the sustainable energy field challenges Western scholars’ dominant assumptions about ecopolitics.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Capacity Building for Sustainable Energy Development

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. How States Build Sustainable Energy Capacity
Abstract
Mitigating the effects of man-made global warming entails reshaping the sectorial structure, changing consumer culture, accelerating technological innovation, and raising public environmental awareness; and, most importantly, the task requires substantial political support for policy leaders so that they may secure immediate, feasible mitigation resolutions to implement long-term climate strategies. Such political support has been considered as needing to be formulated on the basis of a democratic decision-making process in which widening public participation is assumed non-negotiable if legitimately secure agreements are to be reached among various stakeholders to tackle environmentally sensitive problems (OECD 2002; Bulkeley and Mol 2003; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). As part of climate mitigation strategies, the development of sustainable energy has occurred under a universal cognition that is profoundly dependent on democratic political support. The strategy that has been implemented thus far in many industrial countries has been established through a mode of governance that explicitly requires the strengthening of local public participation; otherwise, it is deemed impossible to contribute accountably to improving environmental policy outcomes (Van Tatenhove and Leroy 2003; Few et al. 2007; Andrews-Speed 2012; Devine-Wright 2012). This assumption is also embedded in an emerging consensus regarding an environmental policy template—sustainable development—that entails central government giving up power to local-level governments and creating a new partnership with non-governmental actors in the formation of environmental policies (WCED 1987; Baker 2005). This has become a dominant policy template adopted by an increasing number of states (Hajer 1997).
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Chapter 2. Orthodoxies of Energy Governance
Abstract
For two decades, in the production and accumulation of a growing social science literature, we seem to have witnessed a fundamental change in the ways of seeing government and decision-making under the burgeoning discussion of governance. In order to meet new policy challenges, new fragmented patterns of state-society relations, multi-information gathering, or even higher citizens’ expectations for better public services, public agencies have been given broader responsibilities when making decisions (Pierre and Peters 2000; Bevir et al. 2003a, b; Kooiman 2003; Rhodes 2007; Bevir 2009). They are no longer just asked to follow instructions passed down through traditional vertical levels. Instead, they are expected to undertake a more important external role in order to seek more effective policy outcomes, and so-called stakeholder engagement is regarded as key to promoting various types of public sector performance in a number of industrialised states (Rhodes 1997; Kjaer 2004; Bevir 2010). In the fields of energy, environment, and even in public affairs, it seems to be the case that conceptual changes in perceiving government’s role in providing public services proliferate, while, in the meantime, the concept of governance has become more and more dominant in the contemporary world. However, heterogeneous and ambiguous definitions, and the struggle over practice in the real world, are causing numerous academic debates. In this chapter, I will start conducting an investigation into the connotations of governance, from the broad concept to a discussion of the relations of governance in eco-politics for energy, so as to explore theoretical and practical controversies. The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, I will discuss the definition of governance. Then I will move into the literature of eco-politics, examining notions of sustainability with the changing relationship between participation and inclusiveness introduced before and after the Brundtland Report. I will also discuss the challenges that governance orthodoxy has encountered in real world settings.
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Chapter 3. Theoretical Approaches to the System of Governance of Renewable Energy in China
Abstract
We have discussed the puzzle of how and under what conditions good governance can be generated in our review of the literature pertinent to sustainable energy. It seems that one of the notable controversies underlying the account of orthodox governance is about the effectiveness of decentralisation, the main question being whether decentralisation is conducive to achieving substantial changes of policy and governance (e.g. Bardhan and Mookherjee 2007). This discussion has not only become prevalent in the literature of governance theory but has also increasingly become the central point of dispute in the literature of environmental politics. The rise of the theory and practice of decentralisation is increasingly used in the ‘back-story’, as it were, of globalisation, in which scepticism about the role of the state has prevailed (Bevir 2009). Considered as the means and process of displacement of state power (Pierre and Peters 2000, p. 89), decentralisation is not only a new solution to economic and administrative public demand but is also regarded as a normative institutional design that is plausible for the modern state (Stoker 1998; Rhodes 2007).
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen

China’s Growing ‘Strategic’ Sustainable Energy Industry

Frontmatter
Chapter 4. The Chinese State, the Perceived Environmental Crisis, and the Mixed Paradigm for Diffusing Non-Hydro Renewable Energy
Abstract
In terms of its current state of economic development, China appears to be a robust entity that will continue to grow in the future. Looking back over its short history of economic reform, the country has made swift progress in economic growth in only three decades, moving from an underdeveloped state to becoming the world’s second-largest economy. Its gross domestic product (GDP) has risen at an unprecedented rate, to the extent that many commentators have described the phenomenon (either with positive or negative connotations) as a Miracle, the China Model, or Resilient Authoritarianism, in response to its seemingly unique mode of development (e.g. Gilley 2003; Lin et al. 2003; Zhao 2010; Nathan 2003, 2013; Teets 2013, 2014). The increasing presence of this vocabulary in the literature reflects the fact that initially there was a misunderstanding in predictions about the regime in China, in which an unexpected economic and political phenomenon was encountered. These predictions were rooted in an implicit assumption that the governing system would eventually end, be replaced, or be normalised in the wake of democratisation and capitalist globalisation. However, at least until today, certain eschatological expectations for this regime have not yet been realised, and as many have reluctantly found, the regime of the Chinese Communist Party has not failed thus far but has been bolstered by its deliberate manipulation of state capacity, influencing the world through its neighbouring countries as well as the global community, although internally there is a vulnerability in relation to the stability of the regime (Mertha 2010; Li 2012).
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Chapter 5. Jiangsu: Regional Renewable Planning and Deployment
Abstract
In the previous chapters, the state’s role within the brief history of renewable energy development in China, and institutional strategies that have been introduced in the process of deploying non-hydro renewable energy, were discussed through the theoretical lens of ecological modernisation and the developmental state. This discussion sought to answer the first sub-question. In the next two chapters, in order to further understand how such a hybrid paradigm has been operated and implemented in localities, the key institutional setting, organisational interactions and governance structure, as well as the relationship between central and local governments will be discussed, and the second and third sub-questions will be explored.
  • How and to what extent have bureaucratic norms and standards of centrally formulated policies influenced the implementation of renewable energy in different regions?
  • What is the governance structure of the renewable energy industry at the local level?
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Chapter 6. Zhejiang: Regional Renewable Planning and Deployment
Abstract
In the previous chapters, analysis was first conducted from the wide perspective of centralised renewable energy strategies. Then, the discussion moved to sub-national administrative units, to investigate how Jiangsu Province had shaped its local governance structure for renewable energy in response to the central state’s conscious efforts to promote the emerging industry in a short time. In this chapter, the focus will be on a province with a similar geographical context, Zhejiang, and we shall explore its institutional mechanisms, configurations, actor interactions, and the pattern of local governance in the renewable energy sector. Like the province of Jiangsu, Zhejiang is located in the Yangtze River Delta, and it has achieved roughly the same degree of economic development (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2013). So how does this province, which has a high demand for electricity, deploy its renewable energy, and what is its local governance structure? In this chapter, we shall first explore the socio-economic conditions in Zhejiang, outlining the renewable energy reserves in the province. Then, as in the previous chapter, the maintenance of appropriate institutions and the various actors’ perceptions of the local regime will be examined in order to understand the actors’ various patterns of behaviour within such an institutional framework. Finally, the chapter will conclude with an examination of regional renewable energy governance by comparing and contrasting the two provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu.
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Chapter 7. Towards a New Model of Sustainable Energy Development?
Abstract
This book contributes to the debate around environmental politics and policy by showing that, although decentralised politics has become, by consensus, the model for environmental governance (Hajer and Kesselring 1999; Blühdorn 2013), China’s renewable energy governance model represents an accidental competing model that challenges the orthodox model of environmental governance. This pattern was formed by large-scale centralised state intervention mechanisms which did not involve adopting the Western orthodoxy of participatory governance. China’s policy leaders may have simply seen it as an exclusive strategy motivated by self-preservation. However, this practice has unexpectedly extended beyond the default assumption of the inclusive mode of governance, allowing it—to some extent—to bypass the prolonged dilemma in environmental doctrine between efficiency and democracy, swiftly reaching desired objectives of renewable energy-related environmental policy.
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Governing Sustainable Energies in China
verfasst von
Geoffrey Chun-fung Chen
Copyright-Jahr
2016
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-30969-9
Print ISBN
978-3-319-30968-2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30969-9