The ambition to decouple emissions growth from energy consumption in the economy challenges the policy co-ordination capacity of governments and runs counter to long-standing assumptions about government overload, the shift from government to governance, and government failure. This seminar draws on recent primary research in Washington and Brussels to compare biofuels policy-making in the US and EU. In both jurisdictions demand side policy was enacted without coordination with supply availability, import security concerns, sustainability requirements and with substantial hope invested in the technology for a commercially viable advanced biofuels industry. These design features have set conditions for the politics of implementation in which new sustainability concerns and associated requirements of WTO rule compliance have entered the policy process without being institutionalised in a co-ordinated manner. Indeed, the ambition for sustainability, far from helping to integrate various policy objectives in a common concern, has been used by institutionally-embedded actors in existing policy legacies to protect their autonomy against a coordinated policy process.

Adrian Kay is an Associate Professor in the Crawford School at the ANU. He has previously held academic appointments in the UK and at Griffith University, Queensland. Prior to an academic career, Adrian was a member of the UK government’s European Fast Stream for several years and spent a year working for the European Commission in Brussels. His major research interests are in comparative public policy and international public policy, with a particular empirical focus on the health, agriculture and bioenergy sectors.