The Governance of Anaerobic Digestion in the United Kingdom: Insights from England and Scotland

The role of governance has received considerable attention within the academic literature on sustainability transitions. However, extant theory in this respect has focused on managing and steering sustainability transitions, while referring mainly to the national level of government, so it has yet to account for the role of local authorities.

This thesis seeks to address that deficiency by identifying a set of explanatory factors to explore the reasons why there are differences in the deployment of waste-fed Anaerobic Digestion (AD) in England and Scotland. Specifically, it addresses how cross-sectorial stakeholders from different government levels and with different jurisdictions coordinate together. By doing so, the research contributes to the literature on governing sustainability transitions by discussing insights on environmental governance from the literature on multi-level governance, network governance, policy networks approach and urban climate governance. The exploration of these literatures leads to the adoption of an analytical framework on governance effectiveness, which includes governance, economic and geographical factors.

England and Scotland are chosen for a comparative study to assess their governance effectiveness on the deployment of waste-fed AD. Compared to England, Scotland has been proactive in providing financial and regulatory support. The comparison also involved three local authorities in each nation, with diverse characteristics in food waste management and local governance arrangements. The research provides useful insights on reasons for the differences between the waste-fed AD deployment rates of the two nations. The key contribution of the thesis lies in its revelations about the processes of coordination and learning between national and local levels of government, along with the factors of local capacity, market, and geography. If the sustainability transitions literature is useful in explaining the waste-fed AD deployment in this regard – as it claims to be – then it needs to consider the role of local government.