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legitimation embodies power-play in the Nordic electric mobility transitions case. Enormous support is provided for private electric cars used by
relatively rich people, without similarly strong support to rapidly build out
public electric transport infrastructure or cushion vulnerable groups
against the regressive effects of fiscal policies on electric mobility.
10.2.7 The Routinisation Dimension
Within this dimension, discursive legitimation is in evidence in the
Colorado habitat exchange case. The federal administration puts an end to
mandatory compensatory mitigation by drawing explicit links with energy
independence to make energy extraction an issue of national security. In
the Nordic electric mobility transition case, protest against discursive legitimation to routinise inequitable transition surfaces as people’s critique of
political tokenism in public discourse around electric vehicles. Bureaucratic
legitimation is expressed as routinisation in the Colorado case, where
efforts by Environmental Defense, layered upon prior experiences with
habitat offsets, orchestrate participation in the creation and governance of
the Colorado Habitat Exchange by various relevant actors.
Technocratic legitimation appears as routinisation in the Nordic case,
which identifies dynamics such as promoting off-peak charging, mandating battery recycling to reduce externalities, emphasising the decarbonisation of electric grids and coordinating electric vehicle roll-out with
prioritised non-motorised and intermodal electric transport. Financial
legitimation manifests as routinisation in the Colorado habitat exchange
case. Finance remains absent in practice, but present in the very logic of
markets as mechanisms for the efficient implementation of accountability
on which the market-based offsetting of habitat loss is premised.
10.3 enviRonmentAl goveRnAnce ReseARch
on AccountAbility in eneRgy tRAnsitions
Not all cases of energy transition necessarily feature practices of legitimation across all dimensions. The dimensions are partly an artefact of each
author’s strategically chosen focus and partly reflect data availability.
Thinking in terms of accountability and legitimation does not supplant
other methods and common sense, but rather offers diagnostic value. It is
purposely pliable; the dimensions are overlapping, not mutually exclusive,
S. SAREEN ET AL.
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