‘It's Not Easy Being Green’: Electricity Corporations and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy

Abstract

If costly and catastrophic climate change is to be avoided, there is an immediate need to stabilize and reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) entering the atmosphere. The electricity generation sector, responsible for the highest percentage of the world's GHGs, is under mounting social and political pressure to minimize its GHG emissions. In many countries privatization has resulted in previously vertically integrated public electricity utilities being owned and managed by large energy corporations. The implications of electricity privatization for addressing major environmental issues such as climate change were not considered by governments at the time of sale nor have they been widely studied or understood since. This article adopts a political economy approach to examine corporate behaviour in the electricity generation sector and whether private ownership of this sector impacts on state action to reduce emissions. In examining this issue, we consider the carbon strategies of four energy corporations with a stake in Australia's power generation industry. We consider the relationship between the policy statements of these firms on climate change and carbon emission reductions with the action and strategies of their carbon-intensive power generation assets in the Australian state of Victoria. This integrated analysis and assessment of responses at the various organizational levels of these corporations highlights their complex, and in some cases contradictory, responses towards climate change mitigation and how their behaviour constitutes a significant barrier to GHG emission policies.