Governing China’s Clean Energy Transition: Policy Reforms, Flexible Implementation and the Need for Empirical Investigation
Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, China
Academic Editor: Andy Wright
Energies 2015, 8(11), 13255-13264; https://doi.org/10.3390/en81112367
Received: 25 August 2015 / Revised: 29 October 2015 / Accepted: 16 November 2015 / Published: 23 November 2015
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Energy and Sustainable Development)
In the ten years since committing to clean energy transition, China has formulated a large number of policies and programs to achieve some very ambitious targets. This paper argues that the dearth of empirical studies concerning the implementation of these new policies and programs has created a knowledge gap between official policy documents, which are vague and lacking in specifics, and official policy outcomes, which are unreliable. In particular, the merits and limitations of flexible implementation with regard to desirable outcomes need to be debated and clarified. This paper calls for more empirical investigation in four areas as a starting point: (1) the nature and extent of flexibility in the implementation; (2) implementation strategies and their impacts; (3) factors that shape the behavior of local officials responsible for implementation; and (4) the relationship between the central-local relation and policy implementation.
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Keywords:
clean energy transition; policy; flexible implementation; China
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Lo, K. Governing China’s Clean Energy Transition: Policy Reforms, Flexible Implementation and the Need for Empirical Investigation. Energies 2015, 8, 13255-13264. https://doi.org/10.3390/en81112367
AMA Style
Lo K. Governing China’s Clean Energy Transition: Policy Reforms, Flexible Implementation and the Need for Empirical Investigation. Energies. 2015; 8(11):13255-13264. https://doi.org/10.3390/en81112367
Chicago/Turabian StyleLo, Kevin. 2015. "Governing China’s Clean Energy Transition: Policy Reforms, Flexible Implementation and the Need for Empirical Investigation" Energies 8, no. 11: 13255-13264. https://doi.org/10.3390/en81112367
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