Lost in transition: competing discourses and Australia's energy future
This thesis critically examines Australia's efforts to transform its electricity regime along ecologically sustainable lines. To carry out this analysis, it traces the evolution of climate and energy policy at national, State and local levels through primary interviews and secondary documentary analysis since the emergence of the Toronto Target in 1988. Drawing on insights from the sustainability transitions literature and combining this with a neo-Gramscian perspective, this thesis exposes and deepens our understanding of the power relations that enable and constrain sustainability energy transitions. To date, Australia has made little progress toward 'greening' its electricity regime. Nevertheless, analysis of Australia's sustainability energy transition narrative reveals significant patterns in climate and energy discourse and policy formation. Over the last 25 years configurations of material, institutional and discursive forces have led to moments of policy innovation, which, particularly from 2007 onwards, have shifted the policy landscape. The first formal attempt by the Federal government to introduce an emissions trading scheme (2008 to 2010) offered a new path for energy futures. Ultimately this effort was defeated with relative ease, exposing the contingent nature of sustainability energy transitions in Australia. The second attempt, which sought to introduce a carbon tax (2010 to 2013), proved more successful. A minority Labor government - provoked and supported by the Greens - developed a new and important overarching institutional structure, paving the way for significant reforms. These breakthroughs notwithstanding, institutionalising a sustainability energy transition has proven extremely challenging. This thesis finds that climate policy and energy policy in Australia have been dissociated from one another. This failure of policy coordination and integration is reflected in the diverging goals and paths of each policy domain, and is caused in part by attempts to reconcile competing neoliberal ...
