Aidan While, Andy Jonas and David Gibbs

1. European Climate Change Governance – Towards New Alliances? Exploratory Workshop The Deep, Hull, 2nd – 3rd July 2012. Greening the competitive city? Aidan While, Andy Jonas and David Gibbs

2. Aims of presentation • To review the relationship between sustainable development and the competitive city • To examine whether carbon control is replacing sustainability as a ‘master concept’ (Keil, 2007) in the practice of urban governance • To speculate on the kinds of new coalitions and alliances at the urban scale emerging around low-carbon sustainability • To posit a research agenda

3. The sustainable city Economic development that can be sustained without depleting natural resources or harming the environment - Brundtland • 1987 Brundtland Report: Our Common Future • Agenda 21 • How cities can contribute to sustainable development on a global scale • Compact cities • Minimizing the ecological footprint • Joining up social, economic and environmental policies • Establishing benchmarks for rating competitive cities as more or less sustainable on various criteria • ‘Sustainability’ becomes a necessary feature of ‘good’ urban governance

4. Beyond urban sustainability: towards low-carbon cities • Discourses of climate change and carbon control: implications for urban and regional development and its politics • ‘Eco-state restructuring’: from sustainable development to carbon control • Calculative practices in urban and regional governance • Different trajectories of urban and regional development in a low-carbon economy

5. Carbon control and the UK state (after While, Jonas and Gibbs, 2010) • The UK signs up to the Kyoto Protocol (1997), but targets are weak and undemanding • Nottingham Declaration, 2000, commitment by local government leaders to address the causes and effects of climate change • Climate Change Levy, 2001, a tax on energy bills of businesses used to support a Carbon Trust to foster lower carbon technologies • The Energy White Paper (DTI, 2003), an attempt to shift the balance of energy supply away from a reliance on fossil fuels, • November 2006, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change • Carbon trading scheme introduced for large UK local authorities starting in April 2010 • May 2007, Energy White Paper, to achieve CO2 emissions reduction by some 60% by 2050 • October 2008, Department of Energy and Climate Change is created • November 2008, Climate Change Bill commits the UK to reducing carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels • New coalition government 2010 and localism agenda • RIO plus 20 (2012) fails to produce progress

6. Carbon control meets urban politics • What happens when carbon control meets urban politics? • Carbon control = reducing greenhouse gas emissions + energy security/new energy economics • A new set of concerns within the urban calculus … new alliances?

7. Towards Low Carbon Cities • Globally, more people live in cities than rural areas • Three-quarters of global energy is consumed in cities • Cities account for 80% of all CO2 emissions • Cannot tackle carbon emissions without addressing life in cities • Climate change, energy security and peak oil all driving change • How cities manage the transition from a high to low carbon economy is one of the key questions we face

8. First wave of urban carbon control • Political commitments to carbon control • Carbon control as a moral-ethical imperative • Policy progress (& academic literature) concerned with progressive low-carbon cities (and international networks) “urban climate governance has primarily been driven by policy entrepreneurs and transnational municipal networks, reliant on persuasion and soft forms of (self) regulation through which an emphasis on the win-win potential of addressing climate change in the city has become orthodox” (Bulkeley, 2010: p.248).

9. ‘Second wave’ of urban carbon control • Moral-ethical imperative, remains, plus • The political-economic imperative • Present and future costs of carbon emissions • Increased price of fossil fuels • Place marketing • Economic and social exposure and vulnerabilities • Competition for low-carbon infrastructural investment (and also adaptation infrastructure) • Opportunities for cost-effective investment (Leeds City-Region Mini-Stern), but how is it financed?

10. Low-carbon preconditions for growth? Research shows that there is a compelling economic advantage to pursuing activities that lower [fossil fuel] emissions... For Chicago’s city government alone, the projected infrastructure costs of climate change are nearly four times higher under the higher emissions scenario than they are under the lower emissions scenario (Chicago Climate Action Plan, Climate Change and Chicago: Projections and Potential Impacts(Summary of Final Report)http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org/ first accessed 1/12/08, page 30).

11. Governance challenges/alliances • Energy intervention • Recoupling energy and urban governance (in the UK) e.g. customised urban energy systems • Supporting collective and private investment to make the most of urban energy assets (community owned energy cooperatives) • Low-carbon intervention in the consumption sphere • Behaviour change, acceptance of regulatory intervention • New alliances between urban governments and civil society

12. Capacity to act • ‘Filling in’ the hollowed out state • Energy governance • Energy alliances and economic development • Rethinking state-citizen relations • ‘Filling in’ deficits of trust • Carbon calculating citizens • Does low-carbon = carbon city-regionalism? • Rethinking economic development? • The differential capacity to act

13. Conclusions • Harder-edged second wave of urban carbon control • The economic imperative, but it’s a long-term game • Rethinking the growth regime? • Depending on the ways in which carbon control comes to ground • Targets, taxes, regulation, incentives, disincentives

14. Urban climate governance: the research agenda • What news sets of alliances are emerging in urban governance and why? • Within cities • At regional/city-regional scale • Nationally/internationally • What challenges and opportunities does urban carbon control present for rethinking governance alliances?