Global Governance and Supporting Renewable Energy Development in the South

Developing adequate energy supply structures especially in rural areas of developing countries is seen as a major challenge to be addressed by the global community. Renewable energies will most probably play an essential role in this context. Developing countries dispose of a large potential for renewable energy generation, but in general – basically at least all Low Income Countries (LICs) – lack the capacities and financial means to develop systems of supporting new forms of renewables. In recent years there have been a large number of organizations and enterprises supporting technological development, carrying out advocative actions and offering finance for the spread of renewable energy alongside many private for-profit actors who try to capitalize on the public incentives and financing programs. Concomitantly, there have been a number of attempts to coordinate activities in this field, which can be characterized either as a subfield of global energy governance, global climate governance, or global governance of development. The objective of the paper is twofold: ● First, an overview of the global governance structure is given (“institutional mapping”) showing a steady proliferation of actors and approaches. Similar phenomena can be observed in the area of development in general or other fields of global governance. ● Second, some (tentative) explanations for the developments are given drawing upon multi-level analysis, transaction cost economics, and investment decision theory. Methodologically, the paper builds mainly on a review of the literature. Some additional information is drawn from expert interviews