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they should establish in order to move energy transitions towards sustainability, with a clear basis in evidence.
2.4 FinanciaL Legitimation
Financial legitimation pertains to practices, often spatially remote and
materially elusive, that enable actors to either block out scope for action,
or to fulfil financial requirements and proceed with material actions in
order to retain relevance within a sectoral context. They are perhaps the
most crucial and telltale signifier of the characteristics of an energy transition—which actors are able to secure financial legitimation, through which
practices, for what activities? By structuring the fields of action, capital and
access to credit quite directly shape energy transitions (Hess 2014); thus,
the practices that make up financial legitimation indirectly capture the
core of any sectoral change. One of the refrains iterated by international
agencies trying to steer towards rapid global decarbonisation and equitable access to energy has been the need to make much more capital available for universal access to clean energy (also see Polzin et al. 2017); the
global divestment movement is trying to push money out of fossil fuel
energy to secure contractions of carbon-intensive sources and accelerate
investment in renewable energy (Healy and Barry 2017).
Practices of financial legitimation thus render explicit the relevance of
spatial and scalar connections. But what practices are observable and how
can their study contribute towards more accountable energy transitions?
At the household or individual scale, germane issues include determining
the appropriate levels of compensation for flexibility added to the grid
based on distributed storage, as batteries become affordable and electric
vehicles proliferate, as well as disincentives to prevent users from loading
the grid during peak demand periods (Sareen and Rommetveit 2019).
Several aspects of financial legitimation can in fact be studied in great
empirical detail: what are the challenges actors have to face in securing
financial backing to install and operate different energy sources; how do
these requirements vary across sources; how are these financial parameters
set and by which authority? For instance, renewable energy projects face a
rather different challenge than fossil fuel projects. Most of their lifetime
project costs are concentrated up front: procurement of licences, land and
infrastructure. Once equipment is set up and grid connected, operating
costs are negligible compared to coal or gas thermal plants which consume
a great deal of fuel throughout their lifespan, fuel that additionally often
2 A TYPOLOGY OF PRACTICES OF LEGITIMATION TO CATEGORISE…
they should establish in order to move energy transitions towards sustainability, with a clear basis in evidence.
2.4 FinanciaL Legitimation
Financial legitimation pertains to practices, often spatially remote and
materially elusive, that enable actors to either block out scope for action,
or to fulfil financial requirements and proceed with material actions in
order to retain relevance within a sectoral context. They are perhaps the
most crucial and telltale signifier of the characteristics of an energy transition—which actors are able to secure financial legitimation, through which
practices, for what activities? By structuring the fields of action, capital and
access to credit quite directly shape energy transitions (Hess 2014); thus,
the practices that make up financial legitimation indirectly capture the
core of any sectoral change. One of the refrains iterated by international
agencies trying to steer towards rapid global decarbonisation and equitable access to energy has been the need to make much more capital available for universal access to clean energy (also see Polzin et al. 2017); the
global divestment movement is trying to push money out of fossil fuel
energy to secure contractions of carbon-intensive sources and accelerate
investment in renewable energy (Healy and Barry 2017).
Practices of financial legitimation thus render explicit the relevance of
spatial and scalar connections. But what practices are observable and how
can their study contribute towards more accountable energy transitions?
At the household or individual scale, germane issues include determining
the appropriate levels of compensation for flexibility added to the grid
based on distributed storage, as batteries become affordable and electric
vehicles proliferate, as well as disincentives to prevent users from loading
the grid during peak demand periods (Sareen and Rommetveit 2019).
Several aspects of financial legitimation can in fact be studied in great
empirical detail: what are the challenges actors have to face in securing
financial backing to install and operate different energy sources; how do
these requirements vary across sources; how are these financial parameters
set and by which authority? For instance, renewable energy projects face a
rather different challenge than fossil fuel projects. Most of their lifetime
project costs are concentrated up front: procurement of licences, land and
infrastructure. Once equipment is set up and grid connected, operating
costs are negligible compared to coal or gas thermal plants which consume
a great deal of fuel throughout their lifespan, fuel that additionally often
2 A TYPOLOGY OF PRACTICES OF LEGITIMATION TO CATEGORISE…