Energy Governance: The Challenges of Sustainability

Abstract

The argument in this chapter is that post-privatisation energy governance is struggling with the challenges of sustainable energy. Institutions developed for the earlier job of liberalisation are not necessarily the best for the new task of promoting sustainability (Mitchell, 2007). Yet energy policymakers are proving reluctant to discard principles embedded and embodied in privatised and liberalised energy systems, especially the taboos of explicit technology choice (for details see Chapter 8), direct interventions in infrastructure provision (Chapter 9), and constraining consumer behaviours (Chapter 10).