Governing the power: The possibility of establishing an inclusive German energy system
Abstract: An energy system that is affordable, secure, and environmentally sustainable. Those are the goals of the German government, as they set them out in 2010. This research analyzes how institutional forms of governance shape the possibility of creating an inclusive German energy system, within the CLIFF research project focused on leaving fossil fuels underground. Within the field of energy transitions, the urgency for western countries, and the necessity of a fossil fuel phase-out, are underdeveloped. By employing the inclusive development framework, this analysis is capable of analyzing in how far the three goals of energy governance are able to be achieved, and how they affect each other. By employing a mixed method approach, the multidimensional realities of inclusive development can be fully explored. A secondary data analysis helps establish the level of embeddedness of fossil fuels in the German energy system. Semi-structured interviews focus on the embeddedness of geothermal energy in the oil industry. An extensive and comprehensive policy analysis of all 315 publications made by two federal ministries, between 2014 and now, allows for a complete view of the mechanisms through which the German government hopes to achieve the goals of the Energiewende Fossil fuels are proven to be heavily embedded into the German energy system, both in institutional logics and governance system. This embeddedness is approached by non-inclusive institutional governance, which is lacking in pluralism, learning, and adaptive capacity. These realities make the possibility of achieving an inclusive energy system impossible. The mechanisms employed are not capable of tackling the strong embeddedness, and implicate tradeoffs in the pursuit of different dimensions of inclusive development. A lacking adaptive capacity creates limited possibilities of this prospect changing. This research sets up further questions into why these limited policy mechanisms are employed, and what must be done to change these prospects.