What Explains the Pace of Energy System Transitioning? The Case of Australia's Electricity Sector

Abstract

The increasing visibility of climate impacts around the world reinforces the urgency of achieving deep and rapid decarbonisation across all sectors of the economy. Australia is seemingly well placed to transition towards a sustainable energy future given its abundance of renewable energy sources. Despite this, however, there has been significant resistance to transition away from fossil fuels and decades of policy inaction have firmly established Australia as a climate change laggard. Australia’s per capita emissions are among the highest in the world, principally due to the high reliance on fossil fuels for electricity generation. As the most significant contributor to national greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonising the electricity sector is critical for Australia’s climate mitigation strategies.

The research question this thesis seeks to answer is: what are the barriers and drivers for the adoption of renewable energy sources in Australia’s electricity sector? Thus, the thesis is situated in a broader discourse about the temporality of contemporary energy transitions.

The theoretical framework of this thesis integrates contributions from Original Institutionalism, Post-Keynesianism, and Ecological Economics. The Original Institutionalists are primarily concerned with issues of stability and change over time, leading to a focus on habits, institutions, and technology, while the Post-Keynesian emphasis is on fundamental uncertainty. Incorporating Ecological Economics elucidates the relationship between the human and natural realms. These areas of analytical concern contain four ‘themes’ around which an empirical analysis of the Australian electricity sector is conducted.

It is contended that the study of energy transitions should be underpinned by a deeper and broader understanding of social processes, explicated by drawing upon multiple social science disciplines, beyond conventional economics, which has not been common practice in energy transition studies.