Can advocates of fossil energy technologies in decline invoke energy security to influence energy politics? This article investigates how supporters of Finland's declining peat industry failed to do so, despite a window of opportunity presented by an energy crisis, Finland's dependency on imported Russian energy, and the abrupt end of these imports following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. By focusing on a case where invoking energy security has failed, it sheds light on the conditions that limit the political effects of energy security discourse, which has remained undertheorized in the literature. Using discursive policy analysis, the article analyses 22 expert interviews and 33 policy documents. It shows that neoliberal ideas about how to organize state-market relations can limit the political effects of energy security discourse, even when incumbent interests advocate for a domestic source of energy in times of war and energy crisis. In this case, neoliberalism made the peat decline and the fuel shortage appear as a “market problem” that did not warrant state intervention. The article uses insights from the Finnish case to theorize about the wider implications of how neoliberalism, energy security discourse, and energy crises interact, and how this affects the political influence of established energy interests. It suggests a research agenda on how neoliberalism affect energy transitions and energy politics, and argues that while neoliberalism can work against fossil industries in decline, it also risks impeding transitions to truly sustainable alternatives.

Arguments based on free-market ideals have come to play an increasing role for energy politics and transitions in the Baltic Sea Region. In this chapter, we explore the values and notions of justice that these arguments appeal to. The chapter shows how free-market arguments were used to legitimise energy policy proposals in the context of the latest comprehensive energy policy framework that was made in Sweden, the 2016 bipartisan energy agreement. We compare how two stakeholder coalitions in Swedish energy governance both made use of market-oriented ideals to legitimise diametrically opposed policies: pro-nuclear advocates on the one hand and supporters of a renewable energy transition on the other. The main part of the chapter takes the form of a thematic, inductive analysis of how patterns of meaning unfolded in the market-related arguments advanced by key stakeholders. We also explore and problematise these arguments further by unpacking central assumptions and premises, spelling out how they relate to key rationales for market-based arrangements in contemporary theories of justice. In light of this, we identify key questions that tend to remain unanswered, thereby highlighting major limitations of market-based approaches for articulating and responding to the values at stake in the energy trilemma.

What happens to energy policy discourse when falling profitability makes it difficult to frame incumbent technologies as necessary for providing affordable energy? And how does this affect energy policy? This article investigates how Swedish energy policy discourse responded to a profitability crisis that struck its incumbent nuclear regime in 2016, and how a political decision to support nuclear power was legitimized. It uses Carol Bacchi’s Foucault-inspired policy analysis to analyse 13 interviews and 31 policy documents, and shows how the crisis was met with the framing of nuclear power as a “plannable” energy source (in contrast with intermittent renewables) that was necessary for ensuring capacity adequacy, and with the construction of an ultimatum: to remove a tax on nuclear power or to see nuclear power phased out so abruptly that the power system would be jeopardized. It explores the discursive and institutional conditions that enabled this framing, argues that similar discourses are likely to be constructed in other contexts where capacity adequacy is a more pressing impediment to energy transitions than in Sweden, and points out that energy research risks reproducing dominant discourses by overstating the merits of incumbent baseload technologies. 

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.