Supporting data for Governing the large-scale urban commons: A multi-scalar institutional analysis of energy transitions in Taiwan
Renewable energies gain prominence in the energy policy as a viable option to reduce global carbon emissions. Despite the national-level drive for energy transitions toward decarbonization, the lack of local actions to participate in renewable energies remains prevalent due to complexity and uncertainty. Hence, it is important to explore what conditions could facilitate the inclusion of diverse local actors and the coordination of their complex interactions to participate in renewable energies. This study endeavours to explore this issue with an institutional political-economic approach to solar energy development in the democratic unitary system of Taiwan with the historical legacy of state developmentalism in the period of 2009-2022.
It conceptualizes the collective action problem as the provision of a socio-technical infrastructural good and approaches the co-governance of energy infrastructure with decentralized solar energy with a limited common property regime where the legal and technical inclusion of a wide array of participants for consumption and production of the energy system are authorized by the regulatory state and the owners of solar energy technology respectively. Drawing from the theories of institutional changes, polycentric governance, and the commons, this study evaluates the conditions that initiate and sustain institutional changes for solar energy development with the case-oriented comparative research design.
In recognition of the scalar difference in the motivations for individual actors to participate in solar energy, two analyses are conducted on two distinctively different but interrelated sets of cases at two spatial scales. Through Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Process Tracing Analysis of self-compiled datasets, the first analysis on 19 cases of locality identifies two pathways highlighting the theoretical relevance of geographical constraint and cross-scale institutional linkages. The second analysis of 12 cases of civic initiatives for solar energy identifies one pathway in line with the theory of urban commons. It shows that social cooperative and NPO-community joint program are two specific modes of energy co-governance at the communal scale to facilitate the expansion of solar energy installation and represent better communal interests at the same time.
