| 1. |
- Carton, Wim
(författare)
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Money for nothin’ and coal for free: ‘Technology neutrality’ and biomass development under the Flemish tradable green certificate scheme
- 2016
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 1872-9398 .- 0016-7185. ; 70, s. 69-78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent literature has highlighted the creation of multiple equivalences as an important factor underpinning the rise of market-based mechanisms for environmental regulation. Extending these insights into the field of renewable energy policy, this article focuses on one example of this trend – namely the principle of technology neutrality as applied under the Flemish tradable green certificate scheme – and analyzes the concrete ways in which it has shaped the evolution of the Flemish renewable energy landscape. Concretely, the article shows that technology neutrality played a key role in promoting the uptake of biomass combustion in old coal power plants in Flanders, which led to a number of undesirable outcomes and gave rise to significant opposition. Correcting these shortcomings required a number of policy interventions on the part of the Flemish government that fundamentally moved the scheme away from the principle of technology neutrality and towards a more hybrid RE support system, suggesting that the promotion of technology neutrality was fundamentally misguided. Together with similar experiences from related market-based instruments, this suggests that the promotion of technology neutrality has far-reaching implications for the environmental effectiveness of climate and energy policies. In light of the continued promotion of the principle, the article calls for full recognition of the inherent technological choices that are being made through the promotion of policies that purport to be technology-neutral.
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| 2. |
- Edstedt, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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The benefits that (only) capital can see? Resource access and degradation in industrial carbon forestry, lessons from the CDM in Uganda
- 2018
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 1872-9398 .- 0016-7185. ; 97, s. 315-323
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research has shed light on the various tradeoffs involved in carbon forestry, i.e. the pursuit of international forestry projects to help mitigate climate change. This article contributes to these debates by highlighting the importance of resource quality and degradation in evaluating project benefits and tradeoffs. Focusing on the case of an industrial tree plantation in Uganda, the Kachung Forest Project, we highlight how the livelihoods of communities surrounding the reserve have been affected by interlinked changes in local resource access and resource quality. We show that the project has brought about a significant degradation of fuelwood sources, grazing and cultivation lands, and potentially increased pressure on scarce water sources, which in turn contributed to increased poverty in the area. We also argue that the community development interventions that project actors have pursued have primarily delivered ‘benefits that capital can see’, quick-fix solutions that fit within the profit-maximizing logic in which the forest company operates, while obscuring the underlying and resource-dependent drivers of poverty. Our study calls for closer attention to the interlinked socioecological changes underpinning the foundational tradeoffs – between cost-effective carbon sequestration and long-term environmental and developmental objectives – in the industry forestry model analysed here.
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