Essay Example on The prospects of a potential low carbon Scenario

That is why in this last section will be analyzed the importance of a long term perspective planning and key economic political actors In order to ensure the transition the adopted policy measures will be more effective as they will be integrated into a medium long term vision consistent with the objectives set Within a long term vision the policy maker will be able to better evaluate the opportunity to adopt ambitious measures to guide the evolution of the transition for example incentive disincentive plans or plans for the phasing out of certain technologies capable of anticipating and amplifying the range of benefits that can be activated for the economy itself and the community At the same time the coordination and homogeneity of policies is necessary not just sufficient This would be possible by providing the appropriate tools and coordinating different actors for the development and implementation of policies that are innovative and consistent with the evolution of the transition schemes The political and social alignment is also a very important condition for investors In fact investors are leaning towards a visibility on the future They want to see countries targets how they can contribute and how they can benefit from investments in a low carbon economy Therefore investors require stability of policies and clarity on the visibility of the final target Drawing from the VoC framework from a political institutional organization point of view Coordinated Market Economies seem to have a comparative advantage since they meet the coordination requirements necessary to implement a low carbon economy Indeed according to Soskice and Hall 2001 in coordinated market context companies rely more heavily on relationships that are not market based to coordinate their efforts with other socio economic and political actors 

While in liberal market economies companies coordinate their activities on the basis of hierarchies and factors architectures typical of a competitive market Of course the strong dependence on the market of liberal economies partly contrasts the vision of stability that guarantees the transition However according to Geels 2002 drawing from the Appreciative theory of transition Nelson and Winter 1982 a structure with little hierarchy can be problematic for policymakers who have set priorities on environmental issues Indeed hierarchies are useful for the pursuit of imminent political priorities Furthermore LMEs and CMEs also differ in terms of electoral politics Specifically liberal market economies tend to depoliticize social policies such as the energy climate policy instead of seeking a clear political agreement This represents a more sustainable process under transition pressures While coordinated market economies are mostly characterized by multi party systems accompanied by institutions aimed at information exchange behavior monitoring and bad behavior sanctioning such as trade unions This implies that in CMEs where trade unions and associations have a certain influence on government s choices to protect interests of the heavy industry workers on what these economies usually rely on the decision making process is longer and complex Indeed these coalitions could obstacle such a shift towards this new economic paradigm since at least at the beginning of the transition this would mean the loss of thousands of jobs related to an economy based on heavy industry as for definition it is that of CMEs Therefore the apparent point in favour of cooperation in coordinated economies can actually turn in an obstacle in this context However a low carbon economy could benefit from the absence of a fragmented context of interests and the presence of hierarchies pushing for a shift finding in LMEs a more favourable environment