Comparing Renewable Energy Policies: Technical Knowledge and Institutional Structures

该项目在科学与社会计划的政策，科学，工程和技术组成部分的研究将比较政策，促进可再生能源在美国与德国，以了解制度和背景因素，重点是技术思想和规范价值观嵌入在这些机构，导致通过成功的政策。这种理解将为跨国学习提供更复杂的建议。现在正是研究这些政策的适当时机。消费者和工业界正在迅速采用可再生能源技术，使许多国家的可再生能源工业的年增长率达到两位数。然而，国际比较表明，一些欧洲国家的采用速度比美国快。例如，从1990年到2001年，美国的风力发电装机容量从1 911兆瓦增加到4 062兆瓦。同期，德国的装机容量从48兆瓦扩大到8,712兆瓦。我们认为，不同的公共政策导致了这些不同的结果。 我们将利用历史制度主义，制度学习和技术的社会研究的理论框架，制定制度和政治背景因素的细致入微的帐户，特别关注技术思想和规范价值观的作用，以及它们之间的紧密联系，影响这些国家的尝试，以促进可再生能源。 这种分析将强调制度结构，新思想的制度化作为政策变化的来源，政策思想和技术分析的合法来源的争议和谈判性质，以及不同的政治背景如何在这些问题上达成共识，一位学者称之为公民认识论。在这样做时，我们将深化和丰富制度主义和STS框架。这些理论体系彼此很少关注，它们的综合可能对双方都有利。此外，我们将提供一个非常重要的比较政策问题的细致入微的说明。 我们计划根据对这类政策的制定和运作的背景敏感的分析，为两国提出政策改革建议。更好的政策将导致可再生能源技术更迅速和可持续的扩展。许多学者指出了跨国借鉴的困难。通过密切关注制度和技术背景，我们的分析应该克服这些困难。

This project in the Studies of Policy, Science, Engineering and Technology component of the Science and Society Program will compare policies for promoting renewable energy in the United States with those of Germany in order to understand the institutional and contextual factors, with an emphasis on the technical ideas and normative values embedded in those institutions, that lead to the adoption of successful policies. Such an understanding will inform more sophisticated recommendations for transnational learning. This is an opportune time to study such policies. Consumers and industries are rapidly adopting renewable energy technologies, resulting in annual double-digit growth rates for the renewable energy industry in many countries. However, international comparisons show more rapid adoption in a number of European countries than in the United States. For example, from 1990 to 2001, installed wind capacity in the United States grew from 1,911 MW to 4,062 MW. Over the same period, installed capacity in Germany expanded from 48 MW to 8,712 MW. We contend that different public policies have led to these different outcomes. We will utilize the theoretical frameworks of historical institutionalism, institutional learning, and social studies of technology to develop a nuanced account of the institutional and political contextual factors, paying particularly close attention to the role of technical ideas and normative values, and the tight linkages between them, that influence the attempts of these countries to promote renewable energy. This analysis will emphasize institutional structures, the institutionalization of new ideas as a source of policy change, the contested and negotiated nature of the legitimate sources of policy ideas and technical analysis, and the ways different political contexts come to closure on such issues, what one scholar has termed civic epistemology. In doing so, we will deepen and enrich both the institutionalist and STS frameworks. Those bodies of theory pay little attention to each other and their synthesis could benefit both. In addition, we will provide a nuanced account of a substantively important comparative policy issue. We plan to recommend policy changes for both countries, based on a context-sensitive analysis of the development and operation of such policies. Better policies will lead to more rapid and sustainable expansion of renewable energy technologies. Many scholars have pointed out the difficulties of transnational lesson-drawing. By paying close attention to institutional as well as technological contexts, our analysis should overcome those difficulties.