Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-5 (section)

=== 5.6.4 Policy Sequencing and Packaging to Strengthen Enabling Conditions ===

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Policy coordination is critical to manage infrastructure interdependence across sectors, and to avoid trade-off effects ( [[#Raven--2007|Raven and Verbong 2007]] ; [[#Hiteva--2019|Hiteva and Watson 2019]] ), specifically requiring the consideration of interactions among supply-side and demand-side measures ( ''high evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Kivimaa--2014|Kivimaa and Virkamäki 2014]] ; [[#Rogge--2016|Rogge and Reichardt 2016]] ; de Coninck et al. 2018; [[#Edmondson--2019|Edmondson et al. 2019]] ). For example, the amount of electricity required for cooking can overwhelm the grid which can lead to failure, causing end-users to shift back to traditional biomass or fossil fuels ( [[#Ateba--2018|Ateba et al. 2018]] ; [[#Israel-Akinbo--2018|Israel-Akinbo et al. 2018]] ); thus grid stability policies need to be undertaken in conjunction.

Policymakers operate in a politically dynamic national and international environment, and their policies often reflect their contextual situations and constraints with regards to climate-related reforms ( [[#Levin--2012|Levin et al. 2012]] ; [[#Copland--2019|Copland 2019]] ), including differentiation between developed and developing countries ( ''high evidence, high agreement'' ) (Beer and [[#Beer--2014|Beer 2014]] ; [[#Roy--2018c|Roy et al. 2018c]] ) ''.'' Variables such as internal political stability, equity, informality (Box 5.10), macro-economic conditions, public debt, governance of policies, global oil prices, quality of public services, and the maturity of green technologies play important roles in determining policy directions.

Sequencing policies appropriately is a success factor for climate policy regimes ( ''high evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ). In most situations policy measures require a preparatory phase that prepares the ground by lowering the costs of policies, communicating the costs and benefits to citizens, and building coalitions for policies, thus reducing political resistance ( [[#Meckling--2017|Meckling et al. 2017]] ). This policy sequencing aims to incrementally relax or remove barriers over time to enable significant cumulative increases in policy stringency and create coalitions that support future policy development ( [[#Pahle--2018|Pahle et al. 2018]] ). German policies on renewables began with funding for research, design and development (RD&amp;D), then subsidies for demonstration projects during the 1970s and 1980s, and continued to larger-scale projects such as ‘Solar Roofs’ programmes in the 1990s, including scaled-up feed-in tariffs for solar power ( [[#Jacobsson--2006|Jacobsson and Lauber 2006]] ). These policies led to industrial expansion in wind and solar energy systems, giving rise to powerful renewables interest coalitions that defend existing measures and lend political support for further action. Policy sequencing has also been deployed to introduce technology bans and strict performance standards with a view to eliminating emissions as the end goal, and may involve simultaneous support for low-carbon options while deliberately phasing out established technological regimes ( [[#Rogge--2017|Rogge and Johnstone 2017]] ).

As a key contending policy instrument, carbon pricing also requires embedding into policy packages ( ''high evidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ) ''.'' Pricing may be regressive and perceived as additional costs by households and industry, making investments in green infrastructure politically unfeasible, as examples from France and Australia show ( [[#Copland--2019|Copland 2019]] ; [[#Douenne--2020|Douenne and Fabre 2020]] ). Reforms that would push up household energy expenses are often left aside for fear of how citizens, especially the poor, would react or cope with higher bills ( ''high evidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ) ( [[#Martinez--2017|Martinez and Viegas 2017]] ; [[#Tesfamichael--2021|Tesfamichael et al. 2021]] ). This makes it important to precede carbon pricing with investments in renewable energy and low-carbon transport modes ( [[#Biber--2017|Biber et al. 2017]] ; [[#Tvinnereim--2018|Tvinnereim and Mehling 2018]] ), and especially support for developing countries by building up low-carbon energy and mobility infrastructures and technologies, thus reducing resistance to carbon pricing ( [[#Creutzig--2019|Creutzig 2019]] ). Additionally, carbon pricing receives higher acceptance if fairness and distributive considerations are made explicit in revenue distribution (Box 5.11).

The effectiveness of a policy package is determined by design decisions as well as the wider governance context that include the political environment, institutions for coordination across scales, bureaucratic traditions, and judicial functioning ( ''high evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Howlett--2013|Howlett and Rayner 2013]] ; [[#Rogge--2013|Rogge and Reichardt 2013]] ; [[#Rosenow--2016|Rosenow et al. 2016]] ). Policy packages often emerge through interactions between different policy instruments as they operate in either complementary or contradictory ways, resulting from conflicting policy goals ( [[#Cunningham--2013|Cunningham et al. 2013]] ; [[#Givoni--2013|Givoni et al. 2013]] ). An example includes the acceleration in shift from traditional biomass to the adoption of modern cooking fuel for 80 million households in rural India over a very short period of four years (2016–2020), which employed a comprehensive policy package including financial incentives, infrastructural support and strengthening of the supply chain to induce households to shift towards a clean cooking fuel from the use of biomass ( [[#Kumar--2019|Kumar 2019]] ). This was operationalised by creating a LPG supply chain by linking oil and gas companies with distributors to assure availability, and create infrastructure for local storage along with an improvement of the rural road network, especially in the rural context ( [[#Sankhyayan--2019|Sankhyayan and Dasgupta 2019]] ). State governments initiated separate policies to increase the distributorship of LPG in their states ( [[#Kumar--2016|Kumar et al. 2016]] ). Similarly, policy actions for scaling up electric vehicles need to be well designed and coordinated where EV policy, transport policy and climate policy are used together, working on different decision points and different aspects of human behaviour ( [[#Barton--2017|Barton and Schütte 2017]] ). The coordination of the multiple policy actions enables co-evolution of multiple outcomes that involve shifting towards renewable energy production, improving access to charging infrastructure, carbon pricing and other GHG measures ( [[#Wolbertus--2018|Wolbertus et al. 2018]] ).

Design of policy packages should consider not only policies that support low-carbon transitions but also those that challenge existing carbon-intensive regimes, generating not just policy ‘winners’ but also ‘losers’ ( ''high evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Carley--2020|Carley and Konisky 2020]] ). The winners include low-carbon innovators and entrepreneurs, while the potential losers include incumbents with vested interests in sustaining the status quo ( [[#Mundaca--2018|Mundaca et al. 2018]] ; [[#Monasterolo--2019|Monasterolo and Raberto 2019]] ). Low-carbon policy packages would benefit from looking beyond climate benefits to include non-climate benefits such as health benefits, fuel poverty reductions and environmental co-benefits ( [[#Ürge-Vorsatz--2014|Ürge-Vorsatz et al. 2014]] ; [[#Sovacool--2020b|Sovacool et al. 2020b]] ). The uptake of decentralised energy services using solar PV in rural areas in developing countries is one such example where successful initiatives are linked to the convergence of multiple policies that include import tariffs, research incentives for R&amp;D, job creation programmes, policies to widen health and education services, and strategies for increased safety for women and children ( [[#Kattumuri--2019|Kattumuri and Kruse 2019]] ; [[#Gebreslassie--2020|Gebreslassie 2020]] ).

The energy-efficient lighting transition in Europe represents a good case of the formation of policy coalitions that led to the development of policy packages. As attention to energy efficiency in Europe increased in the 1990s, policymakers attempted to stimulate energy-saving lamp diffusion through voluntary measures. But policies stimulated only limited adoption. Consumers perceived compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) as giving ‘cold’ light, being unattractively shaped, taking too long to achieve full brightness, unsuitable for many fixtures, and unreliable ( [[#Wall--2009|Wall and Crosbie 2009]] ). Still, innovations by major CFL and LED multinationals continued. Increasing political attention to climate change and criticisms from environmental NGOs (e.g. WWF, Greenpeace) strengthened awareness about the inefficiency of incandescent light bulbs (ILBs), which led to negative socio-cultural framings that associated ILBs with energy waste ( [[#Franceschini--2016|Franceschini and Alkemade 2016]] ). The combined pressures from the lighting industry, NGOs and member states led the European Commission to introduce the 2009 ban of ILBs of more than 80W, progressing to lower-wattage bans in successive years. While the ILB ban initially mainly boosted CFL diffusion, it also stimulated LED uptake. LED prices decreased quickly by more than 85% between 2008 and 2012 ( [[#Sanderson--2014|Sanderson and Simons 2014]] ), because of scale economies, standardisation and commoditisation of LED chip technology, and improved manufacturing techniques. Because of further rapid developments to meet consumer tastes, LEDs came to be seen as the future of domestic lighting ( [[#Franceschini--2018|Franceschini et al. 2018]] ). Acknowledging these changing views, the 2016 and 2018 European bans on directional and non-directional halogen bulbs explicitly intended to further accelerate the LED transition and reduce energy consumption for residential lighting.

In summary, more equitable societies are associated with high levels of social trust and enable actions that reduce GHG emissions. To this end, people play an important role in the delivery of demand-side mitigation options within which efficiency and ‘Improve’ options dominate. Policies that are aimed at behaviour and lifestyle changes come with political risks for policymakers. However, the potential exists for broadening demand-side interventions to include ‘Avoid’ and ‘Shift’ policies. Longer term thinking and implementation that involves careful sequencing of policies as well as designing policy packages that address multiple co-benefits would be critical to manage interactions among supply-side and demand-side options to accelerate mitigation.

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