Political barriers to decarbonizing the building sector

Climate change is a wicked problem that calls for new ways of governing. Decarbonization – the process of overcoming society’s dependence on fossil fuels – is a complex process of societal change. Reflexive governance helps address the ambivalence of goals, uncertainty of knowledge, and distributed efforts involved. Accordingly, it emphasizes the importance of participation, experimentation, and collective learning. But decarbonization is also highly political. It requires that fossil fuel supporting norms, institutions, capacities, and coalitions be questioned. Yet, the literature on climate governance largely overlooks politics. My research reveals how politics shape decarbonization trajectories in the building sector through struggles over problem/solution definitions, formal and informal rules, and power.

Understanding these political barriers is crucial for several reasons:

1. It helps us move beyond simplistic, technocratic solutions to address the full complexity of societal transformation.
2. It reveals hidden obstacles that may undermine even the most well-intentioned decarbonization policies.
3. It provides insights into how we can design more effective governance strategies that account for political realities.

International Scale: The World Green Building Council’s Net Zero Program
At the international scale, the World Green Building Council’s Advancing Net Zero program was explored through discourse analysis of over 100 documents, 22 interviews, and two webinar transcripts. Our analysis identified six main storylines used to legitimate Net Zero Carbon Building standards. While the WorldGBC’s legitimation strategy allowed for the rapid diffusion of Net Zero Carbon Building standards, we also found tensions between efficiency claims and procedural integrity, between promises of distributed benefits and economic advantages for industry incumbents. Further research into discursive legitimation practices revealed that the incremental, techno-optimistic approach to decarbonization was legitimated by nesting these discourses within more systemic sustainability narratives. The perception of consensus was fostered by adopting a broad definition that could be adapted to various regional expectations, while actively suppressing public conflict over the Net Zero Carbon Building solution. This demonstrates how legitimacy imperatives and discursive practices can limit transformative change. It highlights the challenges of making diverse perspectives explicit and reflecting upon them publicly. At the same time, these findings underscore the need to reflect on legitimation discourses, practices, and mechanisms that reinforce the status quo or provide opportunities for change. These reflections are increasingly critical to avoid depoliticising decarbonization as public policymakers consider private standards as policy models or compliance options.

Urban Scale: Building Emission Performance Standards
At the urban scale, I studied building emission performance standards (BEPS) in Boston, New York, Seattle, Tokyo and Vancouver. BEPS require that existing buildings meet operational emissions targets that decrease over time. Some view BEPS as transformative policies capable of breaking past cycles of fossil fuel dependence to deliver the decarbonized built environments of the future. Yet, the transformative capacity of BEPS had yet to be assessed. Our assessment was based on 54 academic and policy documents and three expert interviews. An initial documentary review helped identify systemic barriers to building sector decarbonization and their interactions. This framework was used to evaluate the extent to which BEPS challenge or reinforce these carbon lock-ins. While BEPS challenge limited municipal authority, they reinforce suboptimal retrofits, fuel dependence, and have little impact on behavioural barriers. Prescriptive compliance options, that reduce both the fossil fuel use and administrative compliance costs, showed the most promise for driving transformative change. Understanding emissions as sources of urban pollution enhanced municipal authority. This framing also supported a more holistic approach to decarbonization by drawing attention to issues of urban air quality, citizen wellbeing, and energy poverty.

National Scale: Multilevel Power Dynamics
In the Canadian context, I mapped the multilevel power dynamics surrounding building decarbonization policy in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec and discussed their implications for decarbonization trajectories. These mapping were based on over 200 policy documents, press releases, and industry reports as well as 27 interviews with policymakers, industry stakeholders, and academic experts. Our analysis revealed three distinct power structures and trajectories. Overall, building sector trajectories were largely dictated by the nature and power of coalitions between provincial governments and energy utilities. In all cases, political power – voters support – was necessary to drive decarbonization. The results suggest that power structures that are more conducive to decarbonization can be fostered by dissociating provincial coalition capacities from fossil fuel revenues, providing policy certainty, distributing authority based on trust, and increasing transparency and accountability.

Together these studies highlight three main political barriers to decarbonization governance:

1. Decarbonization discourses and discursive practices may reinforce status quo. 
2. The transformative capacity of urban policies depends on the institutional and political contexts in which they are developed. Incremental policies are often more politically feasible than transformative ones. 
3. Existing multilevel power structures may limit the potential for transformative approaches to decarbonization.

Our work suggests the following ways to address these barriers:

1. Making decarbonization discourses and practices explicit can help identify discursive lock-ins and opportunities for change. It can also help identify discourse coalitions and their relative discursive power. 
2. The transformative capacity of urban policy can be assessed during policy development by considering how different policy designs and mixes address carbon lock-ins. 
3. Understanding multilevel power dynamics can help identify ways to foster power structures that are more conducive to decarbonization.
4. Enhancing citizen awareness and ability to engage in the decarbonization debate can support more transformative and equitable decarbonization.

By recognizing the political nature of decarbonization, we can design more effective governance strategies. This approach moves beyond technical solutions to address the complexity of governing social transformations in inherently political contexts.

Further resources: 

Bernstein, S., & Hoffmann, M. (2018). The politics of decarbonization and the catalytic impact of subnational climate experiments. Policy Sciences, 51(2), 189-211. 

Linton, S., Clarke, A., & Tozer, L. (2021). Strategies and Governance for Implementing Deep Decarbonization Plans at the Local Level. Sustainability, 13(1), 22. doi:10.3390/su13010154

Marquardt, J. (2017). Conceptualizing power in multi-level climate governance. Journal of Cleaner Production, 154, 167-175. 

Marquardt, J., & Nasiritousi, N. (2022). Imaginary lock-ins in climate change politics: the challenge to envision a fossil-free future. Environmental Politics, 31(4), 621-642. doi:10.1080/09644016.2021.1951479

Tozer, L. (2020). Catalyzing political momentum for the effective implementation of decarbonization for urban buildings. Energy Policy, 136, 111042. 

Voß, J.-P., & Bornemann, B. (2011). The politics of reflexive governance: challenges for designing adaptive management and transition management. Ecology and society, 16(2).