Conference Agenda

Norway’s paradoxical relationship with climate change – as champion of domestic and foreign climate policies but persistent producer and exporter of oil and gas – makes the country a deeply informative case study regarding processes of climate delayism. The paradox is rooted in Norway’s political economy with a heavily state-controlled oil industry generating significant tax revenues and feeding its sovereign wealth fund. Oil profits have created much of Norway’s collective wealth and high living standards to date and promise future financial security. This interdependence between the wellbeing of society and industry has created a close alignment of interests between public and private actors, favoring unabated oil production in the foreseeable future. At the same time, Norway has a green identity and committed itself to the Paris Agreement’s goals, which require economic decarbonization at the global scale over the coming decades. This raises the question how the government-industry coalition justifies its position regarding oil vis-à-vis domestic and international audiences: What are the mid-century visions created by state and industry leaders in Norway, and how do they reconcile commitments to fight climate change and the continued production of oil? I answer these questions with an analysis of the long-term climate imaginaries that have been created by the Norwegian government and a set of key industry actors since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. I collect and analyze documents produced by these actors, including reports, websites, and speeches, as well as the imagery that accompanies these texts, to identify the discursive strategies of climate delayism deployed in Norway. I argue that while government and industry imaginaries are distinct, they all co-opt climate action discourses that focus on global-scale technology-driven solutions to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Complying with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change implicitly requires leaving fossil fuel underground (LFFU), resulting in stranded FF reserves (untapped) and stranded assets (FF infrastructure, labour, etc. to extract FF). The recent mapping of the so-called “carbon bombs”, prospective or operational extraction projects that would emit each ≥1 gigaton of CO₂ emissions if used completely, makes it even more urgent to address LFFU. This trend raises development trade-offs in the “burnable carbon” distribution among countries, and equity issues regarding the Global South and its necessary energy transition, since most of FF reserves are located there. There are no review papers on the challenges of the energy transition with respect to LFFU and the resulting stranded resources and assets. Furthermore, the scholarship on the Global South is scattered, hence we ask: What lessons can be learnt from reviewing the scholarship on the energy transition in the Global South, focusing on the fossil fuel phase-out and the issue of stranded assets and resources? We systematically review (a) energy transition studies and (b) international development literature, focused on climate change and fossil fuels. Out of a larger set, we identified 96 peer-reviewed papers and 15 reports from grey literature. Our systematic review reveals that: (a) while the literature emphasizes the challenges of promoting and financing renewables in the Global South, it pays less attention to supply-side measures beyond the issue of phasing out FF subsidies; (b) research seldom addresses the dilemmas and hazards of stranded assets (and resources) for the Global South, as opposed to the claim to the Right to Development; (c) the energy transition in the Global South focuses more on energy addition and FF expansion rather than LFFU. Thus, the literature understates: (i) the connections between the energy transition, the issue of stranded resources and assets, and the consequences for the Global South in terms of equity, development, and climate impacts; and (ii) the underlying power dynamics, between and within countries. Future research should take a political economy approach to this challenge, focus more adequately on the viability of energy leapfrogging (substantial change, or transformation) in the Global South, critically assess the additive rather than substitutive character of renewable energy sources in the Global South, and better identify the constraints to an inclusive energy transition, posed by North-South power dynamics, as well as by the narratives and vested interests of FF incumbent actors.

The challenges of ambiguity are increasingly prominent in debates about how governance arrangements respond to complex public policy issues that are driven by a logic of technical rationality that demands quantification and standardization. Decarbonisation – in short, removing fossil fuels from energy and economic systems – is one such issue at the core of mitigation efforts under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. Ambiguity is understood in the literature as ‘not clearly defined’, as embodying a plurality of meanings or arcs of interpretation, and as a type of uncertainty that emerges from complexity. The literature on governance and the science-policy interface suggests that the role of ambiguity is poorly understood. For some, there is strategic value in ambiguity as an institutional response to the challenges of a world of contradictory ‘certainties’ or uncertainties, allowing for a flexible interpretation of rules and targets to account for diverse interests and capacities. For others, ambiguity raises concerns about conceptual capture by those who impose preferred interpretations of key climate-mitigation terms and practices, or as an excuse for doing little in the absence of accepted standards and precise definitions.

In an ESG context, then, ambiguity can function as a concept, as an analytical device, and as guidance for empirical inquiry. This paper applies this ambiguity framework to an initial desk-study of decarbonisation pathways in Southeast Asia, a region that has significant negative exposure to climate impacts and associated economic consequences, and which continues to be highly dependent on fossil fuels. It draws on ASEAN Member States’ NDCs and climate action plans and key ASEAN climate and energy-relevant plans of action for its primary data. Preliminary findings show that decarbonisation policy in the region is characterised by three interconnected versions of ambiguity. The first is ambiguity of objectives, including those that arise from the framing of mitigation challenges, and definitional and interpretive ambiguities around decarbonisation, net-zero, carbon-neutrality, and loss and damage. The second relates to pathway ambiguities embedded in arguments about appropriate technology for decarbonisation, managing energy renewables and land-based activities, and climate finance as well as more specific ambiguities around data sources, monitoring, verification and reporting, and cost calculations. The final category examines and evaluates ambiguous claims about actual and anticipated outcomes in aggregate national terms and in sectors such as energy, agriculture and land-use, and urban development that are key to decarbonisation in Southeast Asia.

A rising number of climate cases is brought against governments, administrations, and companies in support of enhanced climate action. With the growing number of climate cases there is also a growing body of research related to the dynamics and effects of climate litigation. This paper aims to contribute to this emerging research agenda by developing, operationalizing and testing a method that permits assessing the societal dynamics of climate litigation and its effects beyond the strictly legal realm, i.e. with regards to other forms of climate-related societal engagement.

To that end, we adopt an interdisciplinary perspective on climate litigation as a social process and examine its potential to act as a driver towards deep decarbonization. Drawing on legal, social, and political sciences, we present two analytical tools, the Social Plausibility Assessment Framework and the Global Opportunity Structure for Climate Action, before testing them at two levels. First, at an overarching level, we analyse general developments in climate litigation and in their societal context. Second, we zoom into two recent landmark decisions, Neubauer et al. v. Germany and Milieudefensie and others v. Shell.

We find that the analytical approach generates valuable insights on the dynamics and effects of climate litigation on both, the overarching and case-specific levels. It permits examining the co-evolution of global governance architectures and emergent forms of climate-related agency, for example through the formation of transnational networks of activism and strategic climate litigation. Our results show that climate litigation is shaped by, and continuously shapes, legal, socio-political, economic, and scientific scripts and repertoires of a Global Opportunity Structure for Climate Action. The research responds to core questions of Stream 1 on Architecture and Agency, such as How are environmental issues influenced by complex global networks across sectors, scales and decision-making arenas? Based on our assessment of the effects of climate litigation, we also gain novel insights into What forms of architecture and agency are most effective in earth system governance across scales.

After decades of debate, there is consensus that humanity must reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to zero and beyond. Achieving this after more than a century of steady growth in such emissions requires a deliberate transformation of key social-ecological systems, particularly energy, transport, and agricultural systems. To realise such a transformation, we must first be able to collectively imagine it. We need to co-create social imaginaries – collective meaning systems for understanding the present and envisioning the future – that can guide the necessary transformation to a zero-carbon future. These zero-carbon imaginaries are a contested cultural space, where multiple meanings and narratives about the future circulate, coincide, and conflict. Such imaginaries play an important part in the governance of energy transitions, alongside material and institutional influences.

This paper examines zero-carbon imaginaries and their role in governing energy transition, using Australia as a case study. The paper provides a cultural sociological analysis of formal institutional imaginaries as expressed in the guiding publications that contribute to the governance of the Australian energy sector. The analysis starts with high-profile international publications, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Carbon Plan. It then narrows in on key Australian publications, such as Australian Government policy documents and the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan. Finally, it considers prominent publications from state and local governments, business, and civil society.

What is apparent from this analysis is that institutional imaginaries largely decentre human agency in favour of technological solutions and focus on pathways without presenting an inspiring vision of the destination – a future zero-carbon world. Zero-carbon imaginaries do become more tangible and people-focused as the geographic focus of the publications narrows. However, even these more tangible zero-carbon imaginaries seem unlikely to inspire human agency and motivate widespread collective action.

The Australian energy sector makes relatively little use of imaginative and creative futures thinking practices, which may at least partly explain the lack of inspiring zero-carbon imaginaries. The final section of the paper considers opportunities to develop zero-carbon imaginaries that can support energy transition, using innovative anticipatory methods and engagement with artists and creative practitioners in emerging genres such as climate fiction, eco-fiction and solarpunk.