TY - JOUR
T1 - The challenge of ratcheting up climate ambitions
T2 - Implementing the ‘experimentalist‘ EU energy and climate governance regulation
AU - Maltby, Tomas
AU - Bocquillon, Pierre
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2024/8/7
Y1 - 2024/8/7
N2 - The 2015 Paris climate Agreement established a ‘bottom-up’, pledge and review process as international climate governance’s central framework. The European Union’s governance framework–the Energy and Climate Governance Regulation (EUGR)–uses a similar architecture. Both require states to regularly create, revise and update national plans while ramping up ambitions towards meeting the collectively agreed commitments and sharing features of Experimentalist Governance. This paper contributes to the debate on experimentalist climate governance’s effectiveness. It assesses systematically the implementation of EUGR based on documentary analysis and expert interviews. We find that the process has been partially effective in raising ambitions but has remained incremental, technocratic and depoliticised. Experimentalist processes such as the EUGR and Paris Agreement require a high level of public and stakeholder engagement to operate but politicisation can have, in turn, adverse effects. This raises questions regarding the ability of experimentalist climate governance to deliver, alone, rapid emission reductions.
AB - The 2015 Paris climate Agreement established a ‘bottom-up’, pledge and review process as international climate governance’s central framework. The European Union’s governance framework–the Energy and Climate Governance Regulation (EUGR)–uses a similar architecture. Both require states to regularly create, revise and update national plans while ramping up ambitions towards meeting the collectively agreed commitments and sharing features of Experimentalist Governance. This paper contributes to the debate on experimentalist climate governance’s effectiveness. It assesses systematically the implementation of EUGR based on documentary analysis and expert interviews. We find that the process has been partially effective in raising ambitions but has remained incremental, technocratic and depoliticised. Experimentalist processes such as the EUGR and Paris Agreement require a high level of public and stakeholder engagement to operate but politicisation can have, in turn, adverse effects. This raises questions regarding the ability of experimentalist climate governance to deliver, alone, rapid emission reductions.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85200677766&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09644016.2024.2386796
DO - 10.1080/09644016.2024.2386796
M3 - Article
SN - 0964-4016
JO - ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
JF - ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
ER -
