UC Berkeley

The need for transitioning towards low-carbon energy systems, and the recent boom in available data, allows for a constant re-evaluation of global electricity sector decarbonization progress, and its underlying theoretical assumptions. Arguably, the existing decarbonization literature and institutional support frameworks focus on top-down supply side mechanisms, where policies, goals, access to financing, and technology innovation are suggested as the main drivers. Here, we synthesize eleven global datasets that range from electricity decarbonization progress, to quality of governance, to international fossil fuel subsidies, and environmental policies, amongst several others, and use methods from data mining to explore the factors that may be fostering or hindering decarbonization progress. This exercise allows us to present numerous hypotheses worth exploring in future research. Some of these hypotheses suggest that policies might be ineffective when misaligned with country specific motivators and inherent characteristics, that even in the absence of policy there are particular inherent characteristics that foster decarbonization progress (e.g., relatively high local energy prices, foreign energy import dependency and the absence of a large extractive resource base), and that the interaction of country-specific enabling environments, inherent characteristics, and motivations is what determines decarbonization progress, rather than stand-alone support mechanisms. We present the hypothesis that existing support mechanisms for decarbonization may be relying too much on blanket strategies (e.g., policies, targets), and that there is a need for support mechanisms that encompass a wider diversity of country-specific underlying conditions. All code and data in this analysis is available upon request.