Carbon border levies have been suggested as an important tool for ramping up climate action. Such a levy is being negotiated as part of the EU’s Green Deal, with input from public consultations. The success of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) will depend on its design and acceptance. While most analyses focus on resistance from the EU’s major external trade partners, this article analyses the views of non-state actors within the EU. Their views will be decisive for the cohesion and determination of the EU as the CBAM proposal encounters external resistance. Examining the views of European business and civil society organizations expressed by 276 respondents in the EU’s public consultation, we show that there is general support for CBAM but divergent views on its purpose and on what to do about the allocation of free allowances in the EU Emissions Trading System, sectoral coverage, exemptions for third countries, export rebates and emissions scope. The success and strength of CBAM will depend on whether the EU is able to resolve these design issues and reach compromises between the opposing views of business and civil society.

The idea of a stringent climate club, once the reserve of academic debates, is quickly gaining ground in international policy circles. This reflects dissatisfaction with the multilateral UNFCCC process, but also hope that a minilateral club could increase climate policy ambition, reinvigorate the Paris Agreement process, and make future emissions pledges stick. With the Biden Presidency renewing the US commitment toward climate action and the European Green Deal proposal for carbon border tariffs, some are advocating the creation of a transatlantic climate club. What could a club approach hope to achieve, and what do we know about its political feasibility and desirability? In this article, we seek conceptual clarification by establishing a typology of different club models; we inject a greater sense of political realism into current debates on the feasibility of these models; and we consider their legitimacy in the context of international climate cooperation. Key policy insights Knowledge gaps and confusion regarding the nature of climate clubs hold back debates about what intergovernmental clubs can contribute to international climate policy. Club design matters: existing club models vary in terms of the proposed size, purpose, operational principles, legal strength, and relationship to the UNFCCC. Clubs focused on normative commitments face low barriers to establishment. They lack legal strength but can help raise policy ambition. Clubs aimed at negotiating targets and measures can increase bargaining efficiency, but struggle to deal with equity and distributional conflicts. Clubs seeking to change incentives via club benefits and sanctions face the highest hurdles to implementation. Their promise to tackle free-riding remains untested and difficult to achieve. Climate clubs face an international legitimacy deficit. Any club proposal needs to consider how to add to, and not distract from, the multilateral climate regime.

Various path dependencies and carbon lock-ins prevent ambitious climate action. In this study, we develop and apply the concept of imaginary lock-ins, or the challenge to envision a decarbonized future beyond the status quo of a fossil-dependent society. We propose a typology of competing imaginaries attached to climate action. Specifically, we distinguish between techno-optimism, ecological modernization, disruptive innovations, and system change. We then explore these competing imaginaries for the case of Sweden. The country plans to become the world’s first fossil-free welfare state by 2045. Based on documents, interviews with stakeholders inside and outside the multi-stakeholder initiative Fossil Free Sweden, and an interview series with all major Swedish party leaders, we illuminate the contested imaginaries of a fossil-free future. While techno-optimism and ecological modernization largely suppress more radical or transformative imaginaries, imaginary lock-ins allow us to assess the potentials and limitations of an initiative to orchestrate climate action.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) increasingly features in climate scenarios that hold global warming well below 2°C by 2100. Given the continuous gap between climate mitigation pledges and the emission pathways that are aligned with achieving the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, we would expect countries to promote CDR in their long-term planning to achieve mid-century targets. Yet, countries may not consider it their responsibility to contribute to the global response to climate change using CDR. Thus, a study of the respective country's long-term climate plans is both timely and vital. Such a study could reveal the pledged collective ambition, the contribution of CDR to the pledged ambition, and how the envisaged role of CDR is described by the different countries. This paper explores the long-term low emission development strategies (LT-LEDS) of countries in order to map the role of CDR in addressing climate change. We also supplement our examination of strategies with the opinions of climate experts. Based on an inductive coding of the material and a literature review, the analytical focus of the analysis includes CDR targets and planning, types of CDR, barriers and opportunities to CDR implementation, as well as international cooperation. Our study of 25 national LT-LEDS submitted to the UN or to the EU, as well as 23 interviews with climate experts, shows that national plans for CDR vary substantially across countries and are generally lacking in detail. The findings also demonstrate that CDR is perceived to be necessary and desirable for achieving mid-century climate goals, but also reveal variation in the intended role of CDR. We use an interpretive approach to outline three possible visions of CDR in climate action: as a panacea, as a necessary fallback and as a chimera. We conclude by discussing what our findings of the envisaged roles of CDR in addressing climate change mean for climate governance. This research thereby contributes to the literature on governing CDR with new comprehensive insights into the long-term climate strategies of countries.

How do governance arrangements affect perceptions of legitimacy and effectiveness amongst non-state actors? This is a pertinent question as the roles of non-state actors have been strengthened in global climate governance. In this paper, we focus on how actors involved in climate governance processes perceive trade-offs and specific factors that risk undermining legitimacy and potential effectiveness of those arrangements. We argue that different rules of procedural legitimacy generate sociological views about whether an institution or its policies will be effective and, in turn, are ‘worthy of support’. To establish this, we engage in an analysis of how nonstate actors have been engaged in the UNFCCC, pre- and post-Paris. We find that efforts to deepen engagement is generating contestation between actors, not fostering collaboration. Focusing on how actors view procedural rules and their potentialities for effective outcomes sheds light on support for those institutions and the development of effective policies.

The legitimacy of international institutions has in recent years received growing interest from scholars, yet analyses of stakeholder perceptions of the legitimacy of institutions that coexist within a governance field have been few in number. Motivated by the proliferation of institutions in the field of global climate and energy governance, this study maps stakeholder perceptions of legitimate institutions and their sources of legitimacy in global renewable energy governance. Specifically, the article makes three contributions to the existing literature. Theoretically, it unpacks the legitimacy concept and offers a multidimensional conception of legitimacy. Methodologically, it captures these different dimensions of legitimacy by relying on three open survey questions. Empirically, it maps legitimacy perceptions among climate and energy experts and not only shows which institutions are considered most legitimate, but also why they are considered legitimate and how this varies between different stakeholders. The article thereby contributes to the literature on legitimacy by providing new insights into the sources of legitimacy among international institutions that operate under institutional complexity.

Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses-covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries-draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve. However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control. Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today's carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of international institutions that address climate change and energy governance, not least in the field of renewable energy. Given scarce resources, policy-makers need to prioritize which institutions to engage with. Central to this choice are considerations of the institutions’ legitimacy. The aim of this chapter is to understand how the legitimacy of international institutions is perceived under conditions of institutional complexity – i.e. in a context, where multiple actors work on the same issue area without overarching coordination. A questionnaire-based study examines common understandings of what makes an institution legitimate and how these understandings diverge amongst policy-makers and key stakeholder groups from different countries. Theoretically, the chapter unpacks the meaning of legitimacy under institutional complexity. Empirically, based on mixed methods, the chapter offers an assessment of legitimacy of a set of climate and energy governance institutions with different but overlapping mandates (the Clean Energy Ministerial, International Energy Agency, International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). This chapter thus provides societally-relevant insights to the literature on legitimacy, with implications for how to strengthen climate and energy governance.

Sustainable Development Goal 7 and the Paris Agreement reiterate the importance of a worldwide uptake of renewable energy. However, the present growth rate of renewables in the global energy mix is too slow to meet international targets. There exists at present a wide range of institutions with different characteristics that work internationally to promote a steeper increase. Whereas previous studies have examined the institutional landscape for renewable energy and the considerable interactions occurring across institutions, it remains unclear what the implications of these institutional interactions are for effectiveness. This paper assesses how institutional interactions can strengthen effectiveness, by focusing on three multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy. Based on an expert survey and semi-structured interviews, the study provides both theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding institutional interactions in relation to effectiveness. Moreover, it provides insights on how to strengthen the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy. Results show that different levels and types of institutional interactions may influence effectiveness differently, with the sharing of procedural information and coordination mechanisms being considered most fruitful to increase effectiveness. Importantly, however, such interactions should not harm the autonomy, nor the efficiency of multi-stakeholder partnerships.