the german energy transition as a regime shift
TRANSCRIPT
Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
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Ecological Economics
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Analysis
The German energy transition as a regime shift
Sebastian Strunz ⁎Department of Economics, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research — UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
⁎ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research — UPermoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. Tel.: +49 341 2
E-mail address: [email protected].
0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.01.019
a b s t r a c t
a r t i c l e i n f oArticle history:Received 1 July 2013Received in revised form 31 January 2014Accepted 31 January 2014Available online 26 February 2014
Keywords:Energy systemEnergy transitionRegime shiftRenewable energy sourcesResilience
In this paper, I use the resilience framework to interpret the project of transforming the German energy systeminto a renewable energy sources (RES)-based system, the so-called Energiewende, as a regime shift. This regimeshift comprises several transformations, which are currently altering the technological, political and economicsystem structure. To build my argument, I first sketch how technological, political and economic developmentsreduced the resilience of the conventional fossil-nuclear energy regime and created a new RES-regime. Second,I depict recent changes in German public discourse and energy policy as the shift to the RES-regime. Third, I high-light the challenges involvedwith increasing the resilience of the RES-regime. In particular, sufficient resilience ofthe electricity transmission grid appears to be crucial for facilitating the transformation of the whole energysystem.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In 1980, an environmental think tank coined thenotion Energiewende,defining it as “growth and prosperity without petroleum and uranium”
(Krause et al., 1980, own translation). At that time, the Energiewendewas only a vision at the left fringe of the German political discourse.Thirty-one years later, in thewake of the Fukushima disaster, a conserva-tive government committed Germany to phase-out nuclear power by2022. This constituted a spectacular policy U-turn because the sameconservative government had previously overturned an earlier attemptto ban nuclear power in Germany from 2000 by a center-left coalitionof Social-Democrats and the Green Party. This policy U-turn also com-pleted a broad political consensus regarding the transformation of theenergy system towards a purely renewable energy source (RES)-basedsystem: Since 2000 substantial support policies have effectively beenpushing RES into the electricity market and in 2010 – i.e. already beforethe Fukushima disaster – Germany had set very ambitious energy policytargets aiming at 80% RES-generated electricity in 2050. The Economist(2012) neatly summarized the history of the Energiewende: “It wasdreamed up in the 1980s, became policy in 2000 and sped up after theFukushima disaster in March 2011.” At this point, three important ques-tions emerge: First, how did the notion of a RES-based energy system,within 30 years, move from an environmentalist vision to a broadlysupported societal project? Second, did the energy transition merely“speed up” in 2011 or does the nuclear phase-out rathermark a substan-tial turning point? Third, what are the biggest challenges for successfullycompleting the energy transition?
FZ, Department of Economics,35 1076.
ghts reserved.
In order to address these questions, I conceptualize the energytransition from a systemic perspective, which might draw on a rangeof analytical frameworks. For instance, Fuchs et al. (2012) rely on thetheory of strategic action fields (Fligstein and Mc Adam, 2012) inorder to analyze the interactions of incumbent actors and challengeractors in the German energy sector and to assess the adaptive capacityof governance structures. Yet, as Fuchs et al. (2012) note, the approachof Fligstein and Mc Adam (2012) suggests a dichotomy between incre-mental and radical change. The transition management approach(Geels, 2002; Geels and Schot, 2007) could also serve as a conceptualbasis for framing the energy transition and has been applied to theDutch example by Verbong and Geels (2007). Transition managementbuilds on the multi-level perspective (MLP) of Rip and Kemp(1998) that distinguishes between niches, socio-technical regimesand socio-technical landscapes, focusing on the interactions betweenthese levels. Inmy view, however, theMLP-approach's delineation ofan exogenous socio-technical landscape “beyond the direct influenceof niche and regime actors” (Geels and Shot, 2007: 400) is question-able because it suggests a hierarchical ordering of the levels.
In this paper, I frame the German Energiewendewithin the resilienceapproach. Here, I refer to the popular Walker et al. (2004) definition ofresilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorga-nize while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the samefunction, structure, identity, and feedbacks”. Since Holling's (1973)seminal work, the concept of resilience is used to analyze dynamic sys-tems that may shift between multiple regimes (“stability domains”).These regimes fundamentally differ in function, structure and feed-backs. If a system's current regime is high in resilience, a shift to anotherregime is unlikely. If, however, the regime's resilience decreases, itbecomes prone to disturbances and possible shifts to another regime.Such a regime shift implies substantial structural reorganization,which may yield catastrophic consequences; for instance, coral reefs
1 The same individual may, therefore, be part of the energy system in several ways.2 Relying on the resilience terminology also implies that I do not follow terminological
differences made in other approaches. In particular, I use the terms transformation andtransition interchangeably, in contrast to much of the transition management literature.(e.g., Brown et al., 2012: 1608).
151S. Strunz / Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
may shift from coral to algae dominance and semi-arid rangelands fromgrasslands to shrubs and bushes that inhibit cattle grazing (Schefferet al., 2001). In sum, resilience is an important property of dynamicsystems in that a high level of resilience helps to avoid undesirableregime shifts while in other contexts a loss of resilience may promotefavorable regime shifts.
I argue that the resilience framework lends itself to shed some lighton two important characteristics of the energy transition: First, themutual interdependence of persistence and change on different scalesof the energy system and second, the dynamic interplay of gradualprocesses and a sudden regime shift. To highlight these points, Iconceive the energy transition as a shift from a fossil-nuclear energyregime to a RES-based regime. In this view, a successful energy transi-tion requires i) a loss of the fossil-nuclear regime's resilience and thecreation of an RES-regime, ii) an identifiable shift of the system to theRES-regime and iii) a high level of resilience of the RES-regime.
My main argument is that the German Energiewende alreadysatisfies i) and ii). In particular, I contend that the political changes in2011 constitute a shift from the fossil-nuclear to the RES-regime. Yetthe energy transition (in large parts) is still a project to be completedin the future and different actors hold different visions of its final state(cf. Section 3.3). Some hope that it will yield a fundamental shake-upof capitalist society, clearing the way for a more democratic, locallyanchored society, others regard it as a purely technological matter. Iaddress this issue by portraying a middle-of-the-road scenario which Ibelieve to be themost plausible: It neither reduces the energy transitionto a matter of technology (=ignoring the social-economic embedmentof technology) nor burdens the endeavor with hopes for societalsalvation (=neglecting the technological and economic aspects of theenergy system).
The analysis carried out here is innovative in that it operationalizesthe resilience framework for a socially constructed system. In thecontext of social systems, resilience has, so far, been used in a rathermetaphoric way. For instance, the review of Crepin et al. (2012: 15)cites the Wikipedia article on the Arab Spring as an example of regimeshifts in social systems, presumably because there are not yet any scien-tific references which actually apply the resilience framework to socialsystems. Furthermore, the present approach is akin to interpretivepolicy analysis in that it treats policies as social constructs that areopen to interpretation (e.g., Yanow, 2000). This approach “brings tech-nical findings together with the political values and social assumptionsto which they relate, as well as the action-oriented narratives requiredfor decision-making” (Fischer, 2009: 7).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, Ioutline the conceptual framework in more detail and introduce myunderstanding of relevant concepts. In Section 3, I analyze the energytransition as a shift from a fossil-nuclear to a RES-based regime. I discussthe value added by this analysis in Section 4, highlighting conceptualimplications for the resilience framework on the one hand and implica-tions for our understanding of the Energiewende on the other hand. InSection 5, I summarize and draw conclusions.
2. Conceptual Framework
Resilience, understood as the capacity of a system to absorbdisturbances and perform changes without fundamentally alteringthe system's functional structure (Walker et al., 2004), can be oper-ationalized for dynamic systems that exhibit two or more regimes(also called “stability domains” or “basins of attraction”). Theseregimes should be identifiable via differences in function, structureand feedbacks. Thus, in order to meaningfully apply the concept ofresilience to the Energiewende I need to i) define the German energysystem and ii) show that it displays these characteristics.
i) I take advantage of the observation that system boundaries arearbitrary constructs and pursue an “all-in” approach: I assume thatevery actor or technological entity that is somehow concerned with
energy via producing/trading/consuming energy or discussing energy-related topics is part of the system.1 Strictly speaking, I focus on theelectricity system. Albeit energy is a broader issue that concerns alsoresidential heating, traffic and the more general question of energyefficiency, discussing all these issues and their relationswould overbur-den the paper's scope. Also, the German Energiewende discourse focuseson electricity while employing the term energy. Hence, when referringto energy although addressing mainly matters of electricity, I do so forpragmatic reasons.
ii) It is possible to meaningfully delineate two energy regimes thatdiffer in function, structure and feedbacks. Sections 3.1 and 3.3 describethe characteristics of the fossil-nuclear (see Table 1) and theRES-regime(see Table 2) in detail. At this point it may suffice to set out the crucialdifferences: Regarding the regimes' function, the fossil-nuclear regimeprovides energy in an affordable and reliable way while the (ideal)RES-regime provides energy in an affordable, reliable and sustainableway. Regarding the regimes' structure, I differentiate three areas:
• Technological structure: energy generation, transmission andconsumption
• Political structure: policies, politics and public discourse,institutions
• Economic structure: economic actors and their relations.
In each of these areas, the fossil-nuclear regime substantially differsfrom the RES-regime. While the former is characterized by large-scaleproduction and transmission technology, a concentrated ownershipstructure and a set of policies and narratives that support thisarrangement, the latter is characterized by a more decentralized tech-nological and economic structure and an alternative, sustainability-oriented set of policies and narratives. The different feedback mecha-nisms of the two regimes result from the interplay of the respectivetechnological, political and economic structures.
By applying the resilience framework, I focus on the interdepen-dence of fast and slow changes as well as persistence and fundamentalchange on different scales, as presented in Gunderson and Holling(2002). Importantly, there is no hierarchical ordering of levels, so thatlow and high levels mutually affect each other — hence the interplayof levels is referred to as “panarchy” (ibid.).
In this resilience perspective, regime shifts are framed as sudden andfundamental changes which are deeply intertwined with slower andmore gradual changes.2 Ideally, regime shifts can be operationalized asnon-linear changes in fast/dependent variables that occur if thresholdvalues of slow/controlling variables are crossed (Carpenter et al.,2001). The exact specification of thresholds, however, may be challeng-ing and becomes more difficult the larger the scale of the system(Walker andMeyers, 2004). Indeed, specifying explicit thresholdswith-in the German energy system seems impossible: For instance, while theshare of RES in electricity production is an important variable of theenergy system, no precise threshold separating the conventional andthe RES regime may be identified. This also implies that resiliencecannot be quantified. However, by focusing on structures and feedbacks,qualitative resilience properties of the different regimes can bedistinguished. The value added by this qualitative analysis consistsin explaining why the 2011 Fukushima-disaster could have thesubstantial impact on German energy policy it did not have inother countries.
The notion of regime shift also involves that the system change is notsmoothly reversible. In the extreme, a shift is irreversible. If reversibilityis given, but forward and backward shifts occur at different thresholdvalues of the underlying variables, the system is said to display
Table 1The fossil-nuclear regime.Source: Author.
Energy system
Function Providing energy for the whole society in a reliable and affordable way
Structure Technological: Large-scale, centralized production capacities and large-scale transmission networkPolitical: Government support for fossil-nuclear power, narratives highlighting security of supply and affordabilityEconomic: Concentrated ownership structure of generation and transmission capacities / oligopoly of four big utilities
Feedbacks Technological–economic: large-scale production and transmission requires capital-intensive investments from big utilities;the latter, in turn, favor large-scale projects to take advantage of economies of scale.Economic–political: concentrated ownership structure yields powerful interest representation and perpetuation of supporting narratives, which inturn contribute to favorable institutional arrangements.
152 S. Strunz / Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
hysteresis. This raises the question how reversible the asserted regimeshift in the German energy system is. Based on the argument thatfeedbacks have changed in favor of an RES-based regime, the paperproposes that there may be some hysteresis in the system.
3 The exact magnitude of the price effect is hard to pin down (overview in Fürsch et al.,2012). Some authors estimate a reduction of peak prices by up to 40% (Frantzen undHauser, 2012: 15).
3. Regimes, Resilience and Transition in Germany's Energy System
3.1. The Fossil-nuclear Regime
The conventional fossil-nuclear regime, which emerged in the1950s, exhibited a set of specific characteristics. On the technologicallevel, energy was generated mainly by nuclear power and fossil fuelsin a centralized production structure before being transmitted to amultitude of consumers. On the political level, the state subsidizedand supported conventional power generation over the whole value-chain. The public discourse centered on security of supply and afford-ability as main targets of the energy system. On the economic level, anoligopoly of four big utilities shared the biggest part of the Germanenergymarket. As each of the “big four” disposed of its own transmissionnetwork, the regional separation of networks effectively inhibited compe-tition and fostered a very rigidmarket structure. In sum, the fossil-nuclearregimewas very resilient for several decades because technological, polit-ical and economic structure mutually reinforced each other. At least twopositive feedbacks perpetuated the fossil-nuclear regime's configuration.A technological–economic feedback fostered large-scale production andtransmission infrastructure and an economic–political feedback ensuredadequate political support (see Table 1).
However, the regime's resilience steadily decreased when politicalchanges spilled over to the economic and the technological areas —
and from there feeding back into the political discourse (see Table 2).After the environmental movement had become an important agendasetter in German politics, RES-support policies were initiated in 1991and significantly extended in 2000. This RES-support led to technologi-cal improvements and increasingly decentralized energy production. Inconsequence, from1996 to 2011, the share of gross electricity consump-tion generated by RES increased from 4% to 20% (BDEW, 2013: 14).Decentralized, small-scale energy production by households orlocal/regional cooperatives significantly changed the energy marketstructure, thereby threatening the fossil-nuclear power oligopoly. In con-trast to conventional energy sources, RES in Germany are predominantlyowned by new actors, which have formerly not been engaged in energyproduction. As of 2010 (Trendresearch, 2011: 45), 40% of all RES capaci-ties were owned by private persons, 14% by project managers, 11% bybanks and funds, 10% by farmers and 9% by businesses (the “big four”not included). Only 6.5% of renewable capacities were owned by the“big four”, who had only reluctantly invested in RES because of the higherequity return on traditional energy sources such as coal (cf. FraunhoferISI, 2013: 11). Thus, the economic–political feedback supporting thefossil-nuclear regime weakened: The “big four” and its lobby organiza-tions lost in political clout. Additionally, the liberalization of theelectricity market within the European Union empowered consumers
and forced producers to unbundle production and transmission. Conse-quently, the energymarket grewmore competitive and also the positivetechnological–economic feedback mechanism in favor of large-scaleenergy production and transmission weakened.
The sharp rise of photovoltaic installations (PV) in the late 2000sprovides a particularly striking example how a development in onestructural area (technology) spills over to the other areas (economic,political), thereby eroding existing feedback loops. The German feed-in tariff system for RES with its guaranteed remunerations for RES-producers and prioritized feed-in for RES proved to be extraordinarilyeffective in the case of PV: From 2004 to 2011, installed capacity of PVin Germany increased from below 1 GW to 24 GW (BDEW, 2013: 13).Since PV is most productive during midday, when electricity prices onthe spot market peak, PV has a strong effect on the merit order, that is,the ranking of electricity generation sources being able to sell on thespot market: PV predominantly displaces electricity from power plantswith high variable costs that only run during peak times. This implieslower peak prices and less running time for conventional peak powerplants.3 The so-called “merit order effect” leads to decreasing profitsfor producers of conventional electricity. By some estimates, currentexpansion trajectories for German PV will lead to lower contributionmargins (the proportion of sales contributing to cover fixed costs) bymore than 25% for existing coal-power plants and more than 30% fornewly built gas power plants (Bode and Groscurth, 2011: 105). Accord-ingly, Bode and Groscurth (2011: 114) conclude that the supportscheme for PV “maybe considered as the accelerator pedal for structuralchange in the power sector”. In terms of the conceptual framework,therefore, the sharp rise of German PV installations in the late2000s weakened the technological–economic feedback favoringfossil-nuclear infrastructure.
Furthermore, the economic–political feedback loosened as well. Bydistributing feed-in tariffs to homeowners and farmers, a broad coalitionof RES-supporters emerged, including traditional conservativeswho hith-erto had no affinity for the energy transition. Consider, for instance, thecase of Bavaria, where in 2011 the feed-in tariff system distributed 2.9bn € to PV owners (BDEW, 2013: 27), many of which are private persons.As Bavaria is the most consistent conservative state in Germany – theregional conservative party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has beenruling since 1957 – , the growing bottom-up support for the energytransition came as an ideological game changer, as J. Göppel, a represen-tative of the party, acknowledges: “The Energiewende initiated abroad shift in thinking in the CSU. This happened as the result of apowerful mass movement from below that demanded it. In southernGermany, Bavarians and others jumped on the possibilities posed byrenewable energy production” (Hockenos, 2013). Thus, the conservativenarrative of the restricted potential of unreliable RES compared toreliable conventional energies lost in appeal (cf. Table 2).
Table 2Changing hegemony of competing narratives as creation of RES feedbacks and erosion of fossil-nuclear feedbacks.Source: Author.
Aspects Creation of the RES-
regime
Loss of resilience of the fossil-
nuclear regime
Ideas:
competing
narratives
Vision: “Growth and
prosperity without oil and
uranium” (Krause et al.
1980)
“Even in the long run, RES like
sun, water or wind cannot
provide more than 4% of our
electricity demand” (German
utilities 1993)
Institutional
arrangements:
energy policy
Effective RES-support:
creation of technological−
economic feedback
favoring decentralized
RES
Support for direct competitors of
fossil-nuclear energy: erosion of
technological-economic feedback
Interests:
changing
constellations
Growing number of
beneficiaries from RES:
creation of economic−
political feedback
Traditional conservative
constituencies leave the fossil-
nuclear interest coalition: erosion
of economic-political feedback
Ideas:
competing
narratives
Energy transition towards
RES as consensual aim
(Federal government
2010a)
Weakening of the old fossil-
nuclear narrative, adjustments
required:
nuclear power a s necessary
bridging technology − “nuclear
and RES are two sides of the
same coin” (Federal government
2010b)
RES-support
policies
introduced
(1991, 2000)
Change in
technological
structure:
RES-share
1996: 4%
2011: 20%
Repercussion
on political
discourse
153S. Strunz / Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
What has been laid out for the case of Bavaria is also characteristic ofthe wider German context. The traditional interest coalition for fossil-nuclear power was weakened by bottom-up support for RES withintraditional conservative constituencies. Adjustments in conservativeenergy policy positions ensued and, therefore, the economic–politicalfeedback supporting fossil-nuclear energy eroded. In 2010, main tenetsof the Energiewende narrative arrived in the mainstream of Germanpolitics when the conservative coalition under Chancellor Merkeladopted an energy concept aiming at over 80% RES supply in 2050and substantial reductions in energy consumption as well as green-house gas emissions (Federal government, 2010a).
From a conceptual perspective, the same processes that lowered thefossil-nuclear regime's resilience created the RES-based regime. Table 2provides a schematic overview of this argument, focusing on thechanging hegemony of competing narratives via the interplay ofideas, institutional arrangements and interests (May and Jochim,2013). “Institutional entrepreneurs” (Westley et al., 2011), such asthe German Green party who advanced RES-support on the politicalagenda, may have played a key factor in building a politicallyconvincing alternative to the fossil-nuclear regime.
Although the aim of a RES-based energy systemwas broadly acceptedby 2010, the main beneficiaries of the fossil-nuclear regime successfullyprevented a full regime shift by adjusting their narratives: As the formerclaim that RES could not contribute a significant share of electricity supply(Germanutilities, 1993) had been falsified by actual developments, itwasnow asserted that a nuclear phase-outwould endanger security of supplyin the short and medium term. Nuclear power was praised as an indis-pensable bridging technology, which would pave the way towards an
RES-based energy system: RES and nuclear were claimed to be “twosides of the same coin” (Federal Government, 2010b). Building on thisnarrative, in 2010 the conservative coalition under Chancellor Merkeldiluted the nuclear phase-out law by a center-left coalition of Social-Democrats and the Green Party from the year 2000 by extending theremaining life periods of German nuclear plants laid down in the old law.
In sum, the changes in narratives, as portrayed in Table 2 reflect theweakened position of the fossil-nuclear lobby and a loss of resilience ofthe conventional regime through eroding feedbacks.
3.2. The Regime Shift
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster starting on March 11, 2011had a profound impact on German energy policy. Chancellor Merkelreasoned that “Fukushima has forever changed the way we define riskin Germany” (Schwägerl, 2011). Only three days after themultiple reac-tor meltdown at Fukushima had got under way, Chancellor Merkeleffectuated a moratorium which required the seven oldest nuclearpower plants in Germany to be immediately taken off the grid. In May2011, the government ordered the old reactors not to be ramped upagain and decided that the remaining German nuclear power plantswill have to shut down by 2022. This nuclear phase-out had repercus-sions on all aspects of the energy system:
• Technological structure: The most immediate effect of the nuclearphase out consisted of a sharp drop in nuclear power's share as theoldest reactors were ordered off the grid. While in 2010 nuclearpower contributed 22% to the overall electricity mix, in 2012 the
Table 3The RES-regime.Source: Author.
Energy system
Function Providing energy for the whole society in a reliable,affordable and sustainable way
Structure Technological structure: Partly decentralized mix of production capacities of all scales, from smallunits on household scale (e.g., geothermal energy and photovoltaics) tovery large units (e.g., off-shore wind-farms); large-scale transmission network
Political structure: Support policies for RES; Energiewende narrativeEconomic structure: Mixed ownership structure of generation and transmission capacities: from
households, communal cooperatives to pension funds and large utilities
Feedbacks Technological-economic: small- and medium-scale RES establish a decentralized ownership structure,which induces more small- and medium-scale RES while discouraging investments in large-scale conventional energies.Economic-political: RES-beneficiaries support RES-policies and the energy transition narrative, which fosters policy support for RES.
154 S. Strunz / Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
share had dropped to 16%. By 2022, the remaining share will have tobe substituted. The effect on the technology portfolio is strongbecausefeed-in from nuclear power is much more stable than feed-in fromvolatile RES. The 2011 decision represents a break-up of technologicalpath-dependency as it forces energy providers and transmissionoperators to adapt within a restricted time-frame.
• Political structure: A long-standing and at times not only rhetoricalbattle between supporters and opponents of nuclear power inGermany has been won by the latter. The established conservativenewspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung opines that in 2011 an“ideological Thirty Years' War” ended (Kohler, 2011). Vitally, it wasa conservative government that always had argued in favor of nuclearpower, which made the decision. At the moment, all parties in theGerman parliament back the nuclear-phase out and it is questionablewhether any possible newcomer to the German political landscapewould be capable of reanimating the debate. While the 2011 nuclearphase-out is, in principle, reversible, the hurdles are high: With thelast nuclear power plant scheduled to shut down in 2022 (FederalGovernment, 2011), there are two more general elections to be holdin Germany until then. In order to halt the phase-out, new politicalactors would need to acquire such political clout so as to changelaws within that timeframe. Since May 2011, the question “shouldGermany phase out fossil and nuclear energy?” is unanimouslyreplaced in public debates by the question “how does Germany bestachieve full RES energy supply?” Importantly, the former beneficiariesof nuclear power agree on this point aswell. For instance, thenewCEOof one of the “big four” utilities recently conceded that “the nuclearpower chapter has come to an end” (Der Spiegel, 2012). In conclusion,the crucial impact of the Conservatives' turn-around is that the lastitem of the “RES cannot substitute for conventional energies” narra-tive has been chipped away (cf. Table 2). It has now been completelysuperseded by the transition narrative as expressed in the FederalGovernment's (2010a) “Energy Strategy 2050”: “The aim is to enterthe age of renewable energies as swiftly as possible […]”. Differentopinion polls show consistent support from 80%–90% of the popula-tion for the aims of the Energiewende, which follow this narrative(Renewable Energies Agency, 2013). In terms of the resilienceapproach, the 2011 nuclear phase-out may be reversible but itdisplays hysteresis because current feedbacks disadvantage the re-emergence of old narratives (cf. Section 3.3).
• Economic structure: Economically, nuclear power was a very impor-tant domain of the big utilities since it demands very high investmentcosts but entails lowvariable costs once a plant is running. In Germanythe introduction of nuclear power had been heavily subsidized(Meyer and Küchler, 2010), so the plant owners could significantlylower their up-front capital costs while reaping the benefits of theirsoon to be depreciated plants. The nuclear phase-out thus deprivesthe “big four” of the most profitable assets within their technologyportfolio and further diminishes their declining market shares. This,in turn, means that the phase-out substantially lowers the political
bargaining power of the fossil-nuclear oligopoly and an erosion ofassociated feedbacks.
Using the resilience framework's terminology, the argument canbe summarized as follows. The 2011 broad political consensus onGermany's future energy trajectory and the nuclear phase-out'srepercussions on the technological and economic structure of theenergy system constituted a shift from the fossil-nuclear towardsthe RES-regime. In this view, the Fukushima-disaster acted as anexogenous disturbance initiating the regime shift.
3.3. The RES-regime
In the ideal RES-regime, energy is to be provided in a sustainableway — what exactly this means, however, becomes less clear on closerinspection and amatter of debate. The commondenominator of alterna-tive visions of the final state of the energy transition is that dependenceon fossil fuels and nuclear energy needs to end. This might be achievedby a broad range of combinations of specific RES and different spatialallocations thereof. In particular, RESmight be allocated in a centralizedor a decentralizedway. As personal preferences differ and every specificcombination of technologies entails a corresponding set of costs,opinions on the best combination and allocation of RES diverge.
In order to condense a plethora of suggested pathways for theenergy transition, I contrast two opposing poles. First, some, espe-cially on the left wing of the German political spectrum, conceivethe Energiewende as an integral part or catalyst of a more thoroughtransformation of the whole society. Following Foxon (2013) thismight be called the “Thousand Flowers” vision. Proponents of thisview hope for the energy transition to deliver a more equitable andless capitalist society. They emphasize the social dimension of sus-tainability and argue for a fully decentralized energy supply inorder to empower local communities. Energy cooperatives andlocal energy autonomy would render any large energy infrastruc-ture, and hence big utilities, superfluous. In this “Thousand Flowers”view, decentralized and socialized provision of energy will clear thepath for an aspired participatory form of democracy. For instance, aleft-alternative think tank holds that “socialization of electricity-,gas- and water grids […] is a requirement of the emancipatory,social–ecological conversion of society and an important elementof democracy's renewal” (ISM, 2011: 17, own translation).
Second, a competing vision reduces the energy transition to a purelytechnological endeavor, which should be implemented in themost effi-cient manner. Adherents of this “Engineering” vision emphasize econo-mies of scale and suggest a highly centralized RES infrastructure. Thisimplies a concentration of wind energy close to the sea as well as off-shore and substantial trans-boundary or trans-continental transmissionof RES, such as imports of solar energy from Northern Africa. Forinstance, Keilhacker and Bruhns (2011) argue that from a physicaland economic perspective current policies favoring decentralized
4 Lignite is themost CO2-intensive fossil fuel and to date the most relevant in Germanybecause it is locally extracted.
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production of RES are counterproductive. Instead, they hold that, the al-location of RES should exclusively follow geographic conditions and in-vestments in transmission grids should be dramatically increased inorder to facilitate cost-efficient deployment of RES.
The RES-regime put forward in this paper and depicted in Table 3represents a middle-of-the-road scenario between those poles. It in-cludes components of both visions; it builds on amix of RES productionon all scales and thus amixed ownership structure. Neither is all energyprovision decentralized, nor is it completely centralized. This technolog-ical and economic setting implies a positive feedback: An energy mixdominated by volatile RES makes slow to ramp up-power plants (coaland nuclear) redundant. The more volatile RES are present, the lesstraditional large-scale power plants serve as technologically appropri-ate and economically profitable parts of the system. This, in turn, furtherpromotes a diverse ownership structure and benefits small-scaleproducers of RES. Yet, the energy system exhibits partly centralizedstructures because even full RES-provision on average cannot avoidsituations where local RES-provision is insufficient; in these situations,either flexible back-up facilities (e.g., gas turbines) or transmissionand storage options need to be present. So, large-scale infrastructure isnot entirely dispensable. The actual degree of decentralization willdepend on future technological developments (e.g., will there be abreakthrough in small-scale electricity storage, which would makehouseholds more independent?) and a set of other factors such asprices, consumption patterns and specific policy choices. Regardingthis issue, a recent study on Australia's future energy system sets outthe trajectories thatmight bring about different degrees of decentraliza-tion (ranging from b20% on-site generation of electricity to almost 50%in 2050, see CSIRO, 2013: 34).
Given the opposing “Thousand Flowers” and the “Engineering”visions – and the many possible versions in between these poles –
how can the portrait of a single middle-of-the-road scenario be justi-fied? As it is beyond the scope of this paper to devise a full set of scenar-ios, the present exposition remains a rough sketch, drawing on acomparison with the ideal types of full (de)centralization. The mainargument here is that both the “Thousand Flowers” and the “Engineering”vision rely on implausible presumptions.
The “Thousand Flowers” vision over-emphasizes the social dimen-sion of the energy transition and neglects its technological and econom-ic aspects. First, complete regional autarky would require eithera breakthrough in small-scale electricity storage technology or con-sumers' willingness to accept extreme shifts in demand followingvolatile RES supply. Given currently conceivable trajectories for technol-ogies and institutional arrangements, full decentralization is unrealistic:If 100% RES-supply by 2050 is to be achieved, substantial centralizedRES and storage facilities are indispensable (e.g., SRU, 2011: 225).Second, current expansion plans for transmission infrastructure hintthat large-scale production (and thus ownership structure) will remainpresent within the next decades (Transmission System Operators,2013). Third, although weakened, the “big four” will likely persist inthe foreseeable future — for instance by operating offshore windparks. Indeed, current policy proposals support the installation of6500 MW offshore capacities by 2020 (15,000 MW by 2030, cf. FAZ,2014).
At the other extreme, the “Engineering” vision ignores the socialdimension of the energy transition. First, without support of and partic-ipation from the civil society, the energy transition is likely to producesubstantial public resistance because citizens then would primarilybear the current costs of the transition, while its benefits mainly accrueto later generations. Here, costs include monetary as well as aestheticaland environmental costs, which may be hard to quantify. Already,NIMBYism related to the location of transmission lines and RES facilities(e.g., biogas) can be observed. Hence, the public acceptability of thetransition depends on individuals and communities directly beinginvolved in and benefitting from the transition process (Musall andKuik, 2011; Walter et al., 2011). Second, the “Engineering” vision is
economically blind on one eye in that it only refers to RES productioncosts. It fails to consider the crucial question of path dependency: The“big four” naturally favor incremental adaptions in order to defendtheir dominant market positions. Substantial commitment to RES bymembers of the former energy oligopoly hinges on strong pressurefrom an increasingly decentralized market structure. In sum, byportraying a middle-of-the-road scenario, I condense a broad range ofplausible pathways, stressing that neither dimension of the energy tran-sition should be neglected.
Drawing on these considerations, what are the biggest challengesfor successfully achieving the energy transition? That is, how tooperationalize resilience of the RES-regime and how to increase thisresilience? First, the share of RES in overall energy supply may be agood indicator for the regime's resilience: The higher the RES-share,the stronger the technological–economic feedback favoring RES anddiscouraging investments in fossil-nuclear capacities.
Second, a rising share of regional dispersed RES would entail declin-ingmarket power of the big utilities. In otherwords, a further decentral-izationwould strengthen the technological–economic feedback in favorof small-scale RES. However, the “big four” utilities naturally try todefend their market shares and thus promote large-scale RES deploy-ment, such as off-shore wind.
Third, the current weakness of the EU Emissions Trading Schemedue to permit surpluses momentarily stabilizes (or even increases)the share of coal and lignite4 in the German electricity mix. In order tophase out coal and lignite, it is, therefore, crucial to either tightenthe emission cap or to implement other adequate regulation. Based onsimulation models Gerbaulet et al. (2013a: iv) argue that – this policyuncertainty notwithstanding – “gradual phasing-out of lignite […]seems likely with the last units closing down around 2040/45”. Uncer-tainty about future CO2-prices discourages investments in new plantsand the systemic feedback calls for flexible gas rather than inflexiblecoal and lignite.
Fourth, the expenses for RES-deployment have sharply increased inrecent years and have driven up household electricity prices. Criticsargue that the energy transition should be implemented in a morecost-effective way and warn of reduced public acceptability and socialimbalances if current cost developments continue [Gawel et al. (2013)summarize the criticism and offer a rebuttal].
Fifth, the transmission grid must be adapted and expanded to copewith increasingly small-scale, local electricity generation whileproviding the possibility for large-scale RES dispatch, particularlyby transferring wind power from Northern Germany to industrialareas in Southern Germany. Yet the official plan for accelerated expan-sion of the transmission grid is a contentious issue. Some experts arguethat the proclaimed expansion needs are overstated because some ofthe proposed new transmission lines would mostly serve to guaranteecontinued feed-in from coal power plants instead of promotingadditional feed-in from RES (Gerbaulet et al., 2013).
Sixth, whatever the actual RES-related requirements of expansion,the resilience of the transmission grid is crucial for the continuous trans-formation of thewhole energy system for another reason: As security ofsupply traditionally constitutes a prioritized aim of German energypolicy, the transformation process should not adversely affect thesystem's overall performancewith regard to reliability of energy supply.Blackouts or intentional emergency shutdowns of parts of the gridwould threaten to undermine public trust in the reliability of a RES-based system. The transformation process of the whole energy systemtherefore draws on sufficient resilience of the transmission grid: Indeed,the ability of the transmission grid towithstand disturbances is general-ly seen as a prerequisite for a reliable energy system (Oren, 2003). Theresponsibility for system functioning at all times lies with transmissiongrid operators, who have to cope with volatile RES. For instance, grid
5 In a conference discussion of this paper, it was proposed that the energy transitionchanges the system's identity from conventional producer–consumer relations to amulti-plicity of prosumers (both producing and consuming) related by a smart grid. While thismight be one illustration of a possible trajectory of the energy transition, other imagesand trajectories would be equally plausible.
Resilience framework Multi-level perspective
Ordering of levels Panarchy:
connection of levels
Nested hierarchy
Window of opportunity Consequence of loss of resilience
in dominant regime and creation
of new regime
Consequence of exogenous landscape
developments or tensions within
regime
Schematic interaction
of levels within
transition process:
Character of transition Non-linear change Gradual process
Regime re-configuration
Niche innovation
Regime shift
Changing feedbacks
Window of opportunity
non-hierarchical
Fig. 1. Stylized comparison of resilience framework (e.g., Gunderson and Holling, 2002; Walker et al., 2004) and multi-level perspective (e.g., Geels, 2002; Verbong and Geels, 2007).Source: Author.
156 S. Strunz / Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
congestion needs to be avoided in times of very strong RES feed-in,and forecasting errors need to be balanced. To this end, grid opera-tors dispose of so-called “ancillary services”, such as adjustmentsof electricity feed-in to prevent grid overload (so-called “re-dispatches”)or reserve power for balancing supply and demand in the short-term.The grid operators' need to exercise these ancillary services may serveas a proxy for the grid's resilience. On the one hand, the number of re-dispatches increased during the last years (e.g., Bundesnetzagentur,2012: 55ff.). On the other hand, between 2008 and 2012 contractedreserve power actually decreased by 20%, and procurement costs fellby 50% even though RES capacities doubled during the same time(Hirth and Ziegenhagen, 2013: 1). Improved cooperation between gridoperators is possibly the main reason for this trend (ibid.). So whilethe expansion of intermittent RES poses challenges, resilient gridfunctioning may be ensured via adequate structural adaptation(cf. Smith and Sterling, 2010).
Summing up, the overall challenge for accomplishing theEnergiewende may be formulated as follows: It is about adapting/transforming the technological structure of the system whileensuring resilient energy provision and social acceptability of thetransition process and its (side-)effects. As the technological struc-ture of the energy system cannot be re-constructed from scratch,it has to be adjusted while running. In more poetic words, thischallenge is well described by Otto Neurath's famous metaphor:
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship butare never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is takenaway a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of theship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams anddriftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradualreconstruction.
In terms of the conceptual framework, increasing the resilience ofthe RES-regime requires strengthening the positive feedbacks so thatthe systemprovides energy in amore andmore sustainableway. Impor-tantly, however, this process must not impair the system's otherfunctions of providing energy in a reliable and affordable way.
4. Discussion
In the following, I first discuss how this analysis may contribute tothe resilience framework itself; second, I ask what it implies for furtherconceptual research on the energy transition.
First, my approach raises two questions for the conceptual frame-work of resilience. Referring to Walker et al.'s (2004) definition ofresilience as the capacity to “reorganize while undergoing change,so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity,and feedbacks”, I applied and contextualized the categories function,structure and feedbacks. Regarding identity, however, I did not findany meaningful way to operationalize the term: Identity proved tobe rather elusive as a system property and seemed much less speci-fiable than function, structure and feedbacks.5 Moreover, the analy-sis suggests that the question how to integrate the concept oftransformability into the resilience framework should be discussedfurther. Following Folke et al. (2010: 1), transformability is a prereq-uisite of resilience in that “transformational change at smaller scalesenables resilience at larger scales”. However, the German energytransition provides an example where resilience of a very specificpart of the system facilitates the transformation of the whole system:Resilience of the transmission grid is a necessary condition for con-tinued public support for the energy transition. I therefore arguethat in the context of the Energiewende, resilience (on a specificlower scale) contributes to transformability (on a higher scale),and not vice versa.
Second, what does my approach add to understanding socio-technological transitions and how does it compare to related literature?The resilience-framework emphasizes two important characteristicsof the energy transition: i) gradual change and sudden shifts are
157S. Strunz / Ecological Economics 100 (2014) 150–158
interdependent; and ii) resilience on a lower scale contributes to trans-formational change on a higher scale. These points seem to be in dangerof being lost if, for instance, the MLP-approach (Geels, 2002) was usedto frame the energy transition. As the MLP-approach treats high-leveldevelopments as exogenous, it may induce underestimation of theimmediate transformative effect of adaptation and transformation onlower levels. Consider this passage from Verbong and Geels' (2007:1036) analysis of the Dutch energy transition:
“This means that we do not agree with all the rhetoric that majorsustainability gains can only be achieved through major shifts tonew systems. This does not mean, however, that transition policyshould only support incremental adjustment options. It is alsoimportant to keep the other,more radical options alive, and facilitatelearning processes and network building. But it does not seem wiseat this moment to choose for massive investments and stimulationprogrammes for more radical options. The reason is that ongoingregime developments do not (yet) provide awindow of opportunity.”
In my understanding, this conclusion might be paraphrased asfollows: Niche innovations should be supported so that they can benefitfrom a window of opportunity. Yet, unless such a window appears,these support policies just need to “keep the innovations alive”.Moreover, substantial sustainability gains can be achieved withouttransforming the current system configuration. The above analysis, incontrast, yields different conclusions: a) The transition to a sustainableenergy system should be interpreted as a major regime shift becausesubstantial changes in function, structure and feedbacks occur. b) Thesame processes that decreased the resilience of the fossil-nuclearregime created the RES-regime and thus a setting inwhich an exogenousdisturbance caused more substantial changes than in other countries.That is, without the “massive investment and stimulation programmes”(Verbong andGeels, 2007) that Germany implemented in the 2000s, theFukushima disaster would not have led to a regime shift. In a sense, thegradual transformation processes facilitated the “window of opportuni-ty” in the first place (cf. Dolata, 2011). The main advantage of theresilience framework then consists in its endogenous treatment of theprocesses that facilitate regime shifts — the erosion of old and theemergence of new feedbacks. Fig. 1 provides an overview of the mostimportant differences of the resilience framework compared to theMLP.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, I frame the Energiewende as a shift from a fossil-nuclearto a RES-based regimeof the energy system. This analysis provides fruit-ful insights on the energy transition in two ways. First, the resilienceframework's focus on scale elucidates the interdependency of persis-tence and change on different scales of the energy system: On thesystem level, resilience of the fossil-nuclear regime needs to bedecreased and resilience of the RES-regime needs to be increased inorder for the energy transition to succeed. Yet on a lower scale, thetechnological structure must continuously fulfill its function to gen-erate and distribute electricity — in particular, the electricity trans-mission grid requires sufficient resilience to avoid blackouts andother disruptions which would undermine public support for theoverall transformation process. Second, the resilience framework'sfocus on dynamic processes highlights the interplay of gradual tran-sition and sudden shifts: While the energy transformation occurs ona timescale of decades, the Fukushima-shock and the ensuingGerman energy policy consensus in 2011 constitute a sudden regimeshift. Since then, the issue whether Germany should phase outfossil-nuclear energy has been replaced by an argument over thebest way to achieve full RES energy supply.
Furthermore, this paper suggests that the relations of differentconcepts within the resilience approach need further discussion. Inparticular, the analysis demonstrates that resilience on lower scales
may be a prerequisite for transformation on higher scales. Thus, theenergy transition provides a counterexample to the view that transfor-mational change at lower scales facilitates resilience at higher scales.While there may be cases in which transformability is a prerequisitefor resilience, the energy transition shows that the reverse dependencymay also hold.
Sure enough, there are limitations to the approach carried out in thispaper. In particular, the analogy of a regime shift inevitably breaks downat somepoint: The sudden and substantial shift in 2011 occurredmainlyon the political level. On the technological and economic levels, the shiftis slower since positive feedbacks between the energy system's techno-logical and economic structure do not change at once but rather gradu-ally. It might be suggested that technological end economic changestherefore relate to the slow/controlling variables of the resilience frame-work while political changes relate to the fast/dependent variables; yetit is arguable whether a definite correspondence could be justified.Moreover, explicit threshold values determining the regime boundariescannot be identified although such parameters would be necessary toprecisely measure resilience (Carpenter et al., 2001).
As every conceptual framework exhibits limitations, the resilienceapproachmay be seen as complementary to other approaches. Compar-ative analyses of the specific (dis-)advantages of different conceptualframeworks are therefore needed (Markard, 2013). For instance, theresilience lens emphasizes aspects that have hitherto been under-analyzed because the MLP has dominated research on sustainabilitytransitions, such as interdependencies across scales.
In sum, I suggest that resilience in this paper is more than a shallowmetaphor: The Energiewende can bemeaningfully framed as a shift froma fossil-nuclear to a RES-based regime with corresponding changes insystem function, structure and feedbacks.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Christian Kuhlicke, Harry Schindler, Anne Kaiser,Mario Neukirch and two anonymous referees for helpful discussionand detailed comments on earlier versions of this paper. Financial sup-port from the German Helmholtz Association under grant HA-303 isgratefully acknowledged.
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