Policy design for sustainable energy and the interplay of procedural and substantive policy instruments

• Main Author: MUKHERJEE, Ishani
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Environmental Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3909
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Contemporary research in the policy sciences places effectiveness as the central goal of policy design. This emphasis permeates both micro-level design considerations for specific policy calibrations, as well as more meso-level policy tool and tool mixes. Effective instrument design, therefore, augments the task of looking at individual tools with regard to considering them as tool ‘compounds’ that comprise substantive and procedural means which interact through the process of designing tools and the subsequent tool calibrations. Drawing on the discussion of policy tools, the academic study of environmental policy instruments has thus far proffered several perspectives on how they can individually be distinguished by their different substantive components and categorized based on common governance resources that need to be mobilized to create them. However, it is eventually how well policy tools are able to coordinate the support of common procedural means and how well they align their implementation plans which determine how effectively they work together as a deliberate environmental policy toolkit designed to meet a common aim of sustainability. In line with the growing literature on policy design and multi-component policy means, the author illustrates the notion of such substantive-procedural design compounds, by comparing what is known about the formulation of three classes of energy policies: renewable energy targets or quotas; feed-in tariffs; and net metering or smart grids.