Adoption of Sustainability Policy Innovations and Green Local Governance
Jisun Youm
Florida State University
Executive Summary
This essay points out that local government should be a critical entity to create innovative polices for
climate change protection and implement efficiently these policies reducing less cost and providing better
benefits. In order to achieve these goals, I suggest two solutions. First, well-organized state Climate
Action Plans (CAPs) can direct local governments to create policy instruments which should fit in their
own goals and conditions. Additionally, interlocal collaboration can be an optimal way to maximize
benefits and minimize cost of production generated by implementing these policies. However, research on
interlocal collaboration for climate change and renewable energy remains underdeveloped. Therefore, a
main goal of this essay is to represent efforts of state government for climate change for describing CAPs
and obstacles for implementing efforts of local government for the same issue considering local
governance structure as a solution.
The complexity of urban problems has increased responsibility of local governments. To deal with the
problems, local governments have adopted innovative policies in order to efficiently provide public
services and reduce cost of production of public services which they current provide. With added
responsibility of local governments, in the early, scholars and local officials were interested into
innovation of adoption by local government to promote local economic development. Under this trend,
school of public choice and urban politics represents adoption of better policies in order to induce more
tax payers and business interest groups. Since 2000s, a concern of local government has moved from era
of creating economic benefits without regarding redistribution of resources and environmental matter to
era of sustainable development considering how to reconcile issues of economic, environment and social
equity at the same time. Therefore, this essay demonstrates how local government plays a role of an
innovator to achieve sustainable development representing efforts of local government to protect climate
change
In contrast to inaction at the national level, U.S states and localities have crated innovative, cooperative,
and increasingly bold strategies to address climate change, most notably by promoting the shift to greater
use of renewable energy and energy efficiency (Engle et al. 2006; Rabe 2007; Zeemring2009; Sharp et al.
2011).
Many state-based initiatives in the U.S emerged from state Climate Action Plans (CAPs) (Byrne et al.
2007). A state CAPs represents a goal and provision of state government to mitigate a climate change
through the institutional and policy structure containing specific proposal and plans which can contribute
to reduce GHG emission. By 2008, 33 states had adopted climate action plans (CAP) in various forms. In
general, a CAP includes the following elements: 1) an inventory of GHG emissions for a base year; 2)
estimates of GHG reductions from the actions taken in the plans; 3) estimated costs of CAP measures; 4)
GHG emissions reduction targets; 5) a set of policy recommendations for different sectors, including
electricity, residential, commercial and public buildings, transportation and industries. For example,
Massachusetts adopted its CAP in 2004 with the joint efforts of 15 state agencies. In this plan,
Massachusetts set its GHG emission targets as reducing the emission to 1990 level by 2010 and 10%
below 1990 level by 2020. The plan also specified the policy for renewable energy deployment by
requiring 1% annual increase of renewable energy portfolio with an emphasis on wind energy.To date, 32
states have completed the CAPS and two states (Idaho and Kansas) are in the process of revising or
developing one.
The state enforcement effort to climate change protection should direct local governments to establishing
their own efforts to reduce GHG. Zhenghong et al. (2010) provide empirical evidence that cities within
state with particular policies to reduce GHG emission establish high quality and number of local climate
change actions. Additionally, local governments drive themselves to adopt local climate policies due to
localized benefits resulting from prohibiting climate risks, reducing air pollution, creating economic
benefits, saving cost of energy etc. (Bestill, 2001). These efforts by local government are verified the fact
that over 900 cities have signed the U.S Conference of Mayors Climate Protection which has target to
reduce greenhouse gas emission by 7% which Kyoto protocol suggested (Mayor Climate Protection
Center, 2008). In order to achieve this targeting, many local governments have adopted new and
innovative policy instruments such as the use of renewable energy sources, green building standards,
financial incentives for energy efficiency, and introduced alternative fuel (Feiock and Audirac, 2009).
However, localities realize the fact that climate problems cannot be contained by jurisdiction boundaries.
While one city may reduce emissions, if nearby localities do not, then overall greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions and related problems such as air pollution in a region may not change substantially (Zahran et
al. 2008). This characteristic generate externality problem generated when outcome of behavior of single
neighbor local government directly or indirectly influence other localities regardless of their intention or
actions. Additionally, in the case of adoption of renewable energy program, the production of renewable
energy requires large scale investment and land to build infrastructure and supply high technology skill
workers with which one single city cannot deal (Faruqee et al. 2006; Porter 2000). It is named of
economy of scale resulting from mismatching between the scope of and jurisdiction of service delivery
boundary. In order to solve these two obstacles, literature has suggested interlocal cooperation. For
example, to reduce externality, local governments should create incentives to lead local government
officials to participate to integrated solutions for the across-boundary problems. Also, to deal with scale
economies, local government can consider collective action with other localities such as joint construction
of region-wide infrastructure, establishing network between supplier and buyer, industrial cluster and so
on. Through collective actions and interlocal collaboration, local governments enable to improve climate
change and renewable energy policies and programs. Under this context, there is a critical question
emerged how communities can easily committee to establishing this collaboration with others reducing
collective action problems. For an answer for this question, early efforts to explain inter-municipal
cooperation focused on social and economic homogeneity (Dye et al. 1963), differences in the scale of
jurisdictions (ACIR 1985), frequency of communication among local officials (Friesema 1971), and
forms of municipal government structure (Marando 1968). Recent research extends the scope of
contributing factors to the number of potential collaborators (Campbell and Glynn 1990), and the
geographic density of governments (Post 2004).That is, research of local governance for collective action
in terms of sustainability becomes one of critical issue which current and prospective scholars in public
administration should investigate.
In spite of this importance, research on interlocal collaboration for climate change and renewable energy
remains underdeveloped. Moreover, previous research ignores to provide empirical evidence for effect of
hierarchical enforcement of state innovative policies to adoption of innovative policy instruments for
climate protection understanding collective action with other localities.
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