27
of what characteristics are seen as worth rewarding financially, and whether
the decision is made by default or based on exhaustive public discussion.
Likewise on the retail market, rules vary vastly across countries in terms of
how much actors such as households and communities can benefit from
installing small-scale solar capacity. Another practice of financial legitimation embedded both deeply and historically in the energy sector pertains
to investments in energy infrastructure, often made from the public purse,
with major consequences for which actors and what energy sources gain
support (Jerneck 2017). This support includes both being able to sell
electricity to the grid and lowering costs for the energy producer, for
instance by co-financing thermal power plant infrastructure by the sea to
enable easy access to international coal shipments, a common practice that
supports one of the highest carbon emitting sources. Studying the manner
in which these issues of financial legitimation are discussed and settled, as
well as whom they favour and penalise, can generate key insights into the
nature of energy transitions.
Overall, then, practices of financial legitimation are possibly the trickiest to interrogate empirically; doing so is, nonetheless, vital in order to
identify the points that warrant the most critical attention for moving
towards accountable energy transitions. These practices take place across
the spatial scale, but their effects are materialised in the sector, and various
reporting mechanisms and mandates as well as investigations by civil society watchdogs render overall trends visible. When it comes to specific
actors in a given context, the contrasting demands that financial legitimation places on them can often be clearly explicated, and serve as a basis to
challenge and contest practices that maintain power differentials in favour
of business as usual. Unpacking this can ease the way for financially competitive renewable energy sources to expand rapidly in a market made
more even by bringing accountability into energy sector transitions.
2.5 Linking hoLLow anD suBstantive
accountaBiLity with sustainaBiLity outcomes
The articulation of the four types of practices of legitimation that relationally constitute accountability, or the lack of it, in energy sector transitions,
paves the way for the final step of the argument in Part I. Overall, any
given transition comprises these practices, which can be disaggregated
into performances of substantive or hollow accountability. At a
2 A TYPOLOGY OF PRACTICES OF LEGITIMATION TO CATEGORISE…
of what characteristics are seen as worth rewarding financially, and whether
the decision is made by default or based on exhaustive public discussion.
Likewise on the retail market, rules vary vastly across countries in terms of
how much actors such as households and communities can benefit from
installing small-scale solar capacity. Another practice of financial legitimation embedded both deeply and historically in the energy sector pertains
to investments in energy infrastructure, often made from the public purse,
with major consequences for which actors and what energy sources gain
support (Jerneck 2017). This support includes both being able to sell
electricity to the grid and lowering costs for the energy producer, for
instance by co-financing thermal power plant infrastructure by the sea to
enable easy access to international coal shipments, a common practice that
supports one of the highest carbon emitting sources. Studying the manner
in which these issues of financial legitimation are discussed and settled, as
well as whom they favour and penalise, can generate key insights into the
nature of energy transitions.
Overall, then, practices of financial legitimation are possibly the trickiest to interrogate empirically; doing so is, nonetheless, vital in order to
identify the points that warrant the most critical attention for moving
towards accountable energy transitions. These practices take place across
the spatial scale, but their effects are materialised in the sector, and various
reporting mechanisms and mandates as well as investigations by civil society watchdogs render overall trends visible. When it comes to specific
actors in a given context, the contrasting demands that financial legitimation places on them can often be clearly explicated, and serve as a basis to
challenge and contest practices that maintain power differentials in favour
of business as usual. Unpacking this can ease the way for financially competitive renewable energy sources to expand rapidly in a market made
more even by bringing accountability into energy sector transitions.
2.5 Linking hoLLow anD suBstantive
accountaBiLity with sustainaBiLity outcomes
The articulation of the four types of practices of legitimation that relationally constitute accountability, or the lack of it, in energy sector transitions,
paves the way for the final step of the argument in Part I. Overall, any
given transition comprises these practices, which can be disaggregated
into performances of substantive or hollow accountability. At a
2 A TYPOLOGY OF PRACTICES OF LEGITIMATION TO CATEGORISE…