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Environmental Politics
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Self-reinforcing and self-undermining feedbacks in
subnational climate policy implementation
Heather Millar , Eve Bourgeois , Steven Bernstein & Matthew Hoffmann
To cite this article: Heather Millar , Eve Bourgeois , Steven Bernstein & Matthew Hoffmann (2020):
Self-reinforcing and self-undermining feedbacks in subnational climate policy implementation,
Environmental Politics, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2020.1825302
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1825302
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa
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Self-reinforcing and self-undermining feedbacks in
subnational climate policy implementation
Heather Millar
a
, Eve Bourgeois
b
, Steven Bernstein
b
and Matthew Homann
b
a
Department of Political Science, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada;
b
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
ABSTRACT
This study demonstrates how interpretive feedback functions as an intervening
mechanism during policy implementation that helps explain variation in subna-
tional climate policy entrenchment. We examine three interrelated climate policy
processes in Ontario, Canada from 2001–2018: a coal phase-out (2001–2014), the
feed-in-tarri (FIT) program for renewable energy (2006–2013) and a cap-and-
trade program (2008–2018). Successful framing of the coal phase-out in terms of
gains for both public health and climate change helped generate a broad-based
coalition of support during implementation. Conversely, we nd that the FIT and
the cap-and-trade programs were vulnerable to framing around losses, especially
regarding electricity rates and household costs, which counter-coalitions used to
weaken public support during implementation. Our analysis demonstrates that
building supportive coalitions for climate policy goes beyond the material gains
and losses generated by initial policy designs. Framing strategies interact with
policy designs over time to support or undermine policy durability.
KEYWORDS Policy feedbacks; policy entrenchment; climate policy; self-reinforcing processes;
self-undermining processes
Introduction
Why do some climate policies endure while others do not? In North America,
carbon pricing policies have survived political leadership changes in British
Columbia, Quebec, and California (Harrison 2012, Houle et al. 2015, Boyd
2017), while other regional emissions trading systems have fully collapsed in
the same time period (Rabe 2016). Renewable portfolio standards have
endured in some US states (Rabe 2018), but there has been notable retrench-
ment in Arizona, Texas, Ohio and Kansas (Stokes 2020). Within jurisdictions,
not all climate policies endure: for example, although Germany’s feed-in-tariff
system for renewable energy production has entrenched, the country has
struggled to phase out coal (Schmid et al. 2019, Meckling 2019a).
CONTACT Heather Millar h.millar@unb.ca
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1825302
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way.
To address this variation, climate scholars have focused on coalition
building that deepens and strengthens support for policies over time
(Levin et al. 2012, Bernstein and Hoffmann 2018, Stokes and Breetz 2018,
Meckling 2019b). Policy design can build political support by providing
material resources to constituents, strengthening supporting coalitions.
The presumption is that policies that deepen benefits to a concentrated set
of constituents or that broaden the set of beneficiaries during policy imple-
mentation are more likely to withstand external shocks and political uphea-
vals, as has been the case for British Columbia’s carbon tax (Rabe 2018) and
the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the eastern United States
(Raymond 2016). Conversely, climate policy designs that deepen costs to
vested interests, or that distribute increasing costs across a wide variety of
constituents are much more likely to generate ongoing political contestation
(Breetz et al. 2018). Yet in some cases climate policies that generated direct
material benefits to clean tech producers, such as the feed-in-tariff (FIT)
program in the Canadian province of Ontario, failed to create strong coali-
tions of support (Stokes 2013, 2016). Other policies that generated substan-
tial material costs to a broad set of producers and consumers have endured,
such as the European Emissions Trading System (Rabe 2018).
These puzzling discrepancies, we argue, can be explained by the political
dynamics of issue framing in climate policy implementation, through inter-
pretive feedback eects. Drawing on policy feedback and framing literatures
(Chong and Druckman 2007, Béland and Schlager 2019) and prospect theory
(Tversky and Kahneman 1981), we show that the publics’ perceptions of
gains and losses during implementation act as an intervening mechanism to
explain policy durability. Policy designs, including the communication and
framing efforts of government actors, can provide an opportunity for elite
supporters to generate different ‘gain frames,’ increasing the salience of the
ongoing benefits of a policy among the general public, dampening voters’
desire for policy retrenchment (Levin et al. 2012, Lachapelle 2017). However,
policy designs can also inadvertently provide opportunities for policy oppo-
nents to generate a multitude of ‘loss frames’ during policy implementation
that increase the salience of costs. When perceptions of loss prevail, an
implemented climate policy will seem a risky endeavor, encouraging voters
to support policy reversal or termination (Tversky and Kahneman 1981,
Jacobs and Weaver 2015, Skogstad 2017). Thus, government actors and allied
and opposing elites and political parties are frequently engaged in the con-
tentious politics of policy framing, targeting the general public, with sub-
stantial effects on climate policy durability.
We demonstrate how these interpretive feedback effects influence climate
policy entrenchment through a detailed examination of three interrelated climate
policy processes in Ontario, Canada (2001–2018): a coal phase-out (2001–2014),
the FIT program for renewable energy (2006–2013) and a cap-and-trade
2H. MILLAR ET AL.
program (2008–2018). Whereas case study research always involves trade-offs
compared to cross-unit analyses, following Gerring (2004), the research design –
focusing on multiple cases with varying entrenchment outcomes in a single
jurisdiction – provides several analytic advantages, detailed further below.
We find that in the case of the coal phase-out, a deliberate initial focus by
policy advocates and government officials on population health benefits,
followed by a subsequent focus on climate benefits during policy implemen-
tation, facilitated processes of self-reinforcing feedback by convincing
Ontarians that the coal phase-out would generate gains, both currently and
in the future. This interpretive feedback bolstered the strength of the pro-
climate coalition throughout a long period of policy implementation, making
it difficult for subsequent governments to reverse the policy. In contrast, the
provincial government’s focus on the economic gains of the FIT failed to
generate issue salience during the process of policy implementation.
Simultaneously, elements of the FIT policy design, such as the removal of
municipal control on the siting process, allowed policy opponents to gen-
erate several ‘loss frames’ for rural Ontarians during implementation, result-
ing in policy retrenchment. The loss frames generated during the
implementation of FIT remained salient during the subsequent adoption
and implementation of the emissions trading system. Despite the govern-
ment’s attempts to frame the cap-and-trade program as a policy that would
provide substantial climate benefits to Ontarians, policy opponents success-
fully generated additional loss frames regarding household costs and govern-
ment performance during implementation, facilitating policy reversal. Our
analysis demonstrates that although policy makers are generally attentive to
the ways in which policy design can initially build coalitional support, they
are often less attuned to how perceptions of losses and gains among the
general public can serve to undermine policy durability over time.
The next section details our analytical framework. We then outline our
methodology and provide a timeline of policy developments in Ontario. The
remainder of the article analyses the dynamics of the cases and discusses the
implications of our findings for future research on subnational climate policy
entrenchment.
Issue framing, policy feedbacks, and policy entrenchment
Policy design fosters political dynamics during policy implementation that
can strengthen or undermine policy entrenchment (Pierson 1993, Béland
2010, Campbell 2012). Policy design can interact with policy context during
implementation to increase the ‘stickiness’ of climate policies, facilitating
policy entrenchment through a process of ‘self-reinforcing feedback’
(Patashnik 2003, Levin et al. 2012). While scholars’ characterizations and
labelling of self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms vary slightly, they all focus
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 3
on how climate policy designs can foster processes of coalition building by
increasing returns to a concentrated set of beneficiaries or raising costs of
reversal over time, deepening support for a particular intervention (Levin
et al. 2012). For example, by guaranteeing fixed prices to renewable energy
producers over a set period, producers can reduce marginal costs, increase
profits, and strengthen renewable energy producers’ support for FIT pro-
grams over time (Meckling 2019a).
Self-reinforcing feedbacks can also occur when policy designs increase
returns for a wider breadth of diverse beneficiaries over time (Levin et al.
2012). For example, climate programs that use funds generated by emissions
trading systems to support housing energy efficiency measures can benefit an
ever-increasing number of homeowners in a jurisdiction (Raymond 2016).
Similarly, electric vehicle targets and standards can weaken historical coali-
tions between oil and gas distributors and public utilities by providing new
material incentives to utilities to invest in charging infrastructure and sup-
port ongoing electric vehicle production (Bade 2019).
However, policy designs can also unleash countervailing processes of ‘self-
undermining feedback’: unintended political dynamics that undermine sup-
port, making policy reversal or termination easier (Jordan and Matt 2014,
Jacobs and Weaver 2015). Policies can facilitate the creation of counter-
coalitions by increasing costs to a concentrated set of actors over time
(Jordan and Matt 2014). For example, emission trading systems that lower
emissions caps on industry emitters increase the burden on fossil fuel
producers over time, intensifying industry opposition (Rabe 2018). Policy
designs can also generate unanticipated costs for other sets of actors during
policy implementation. For example, attempts to decarbonize a jurisdiction’s
energy mix through a renewable portfolio standard can draw voters’ atten-
tion to alternative energy producers’ market share, encouraging jurisdictions
to abandon nuclear energy (Schmid et al. 2019). Table 1 summarizes how
material benefits and costs can shape coalitions in support of or in opposition
to climate policies.
Although energy and climate scholarship has focused primarily on how
material costs and benefits affect coalitional strength (Schmid et al. 2019,
Table 1. Climate policy feedbacks: resource effects.
Process Mechanism Indicator
Self-reinforcing
feedback
Policy design fosters deepening benefits to
a concentrated set of constituents and/or
provides benefits to a broader set of
constituents during implementation
Pro-policy coalitions increase in
size during policy
implementation
Self-undermining
feedback
Policy design imposes deepening costs to
a concentrated set of constituents and/or
imposes costs on a broader set of
constituents during implementation
Anti-policy coalitions increase
in size during policy
implementation
4H. MILLAR ET AL.
Meckling 2019b), broader policy feedback and political communication
scholarship also stresses that the perception of gains and losses among mass
publics can significantly influence processes of self-reinforcing and self-
undermining feedback (Jacobs and Weaver 2015, Skogstad 2017). Political
communication studies have demonstrated that framing, specifically which
elements of a policy are highlighted and/or excluded, can affect how mem-
bers of the public determine their policy preferences (Tversky and
Kahneman 1981, Chong and Druckman 2007). Attribute framing, policy
labelling, and framing around benefits have been found to influence public
support for various climate policies (Ansolabehere and Konisky 2016,
Lachapelle 2017, Stokes and Warshaw 2017). At the same time, public
opinion scholars have stressed that the influence of framing effects is highly
dependent on contextual factors, including voters’ partisan affiliations,
demographic effects, and the presence and valence of competing frames
(Pralle and Boscarino 2011, Aklin and Urpelainen 2013, Lachapelle 2017).
These studies suggest that issue frames are a resource that policy elites can
use to build coalitions in support of their preferred policies. Policy designs
can foster self-reinforcing feedbacks by providing opportunities for policy
elites to mobilize ‘gain frames’ emphasizing economic, social, health, or
environmental gains to individuals, groups, and society at large. Gain frames
can increase the salience of the success of a given policy, making it more
difficult to reverse (Skocpol 1995, Patashnik 2003).
Conversely, self-undermining feedbacks are more likely if the dimensions of
a climate policy design can be framed to increase the salience of loss (Jacobs and
Weaver 2015). Findings from cognitive psychology and prospect theory suggest
that given functionally equivalent options, individuals will strive to avoid loss
rather than seek out gains (Tversky and Kahneman 1981). Jacobs and Weaver
(2015, p. 447) argue that this predisposition to loss-aversion can have significant
effects on public attitudes, as these cognitive biases make citizens particularly
susceptible to loss, as opposed to gain, frame effects. Policy elites can highlight
losses in order to reduce support for a given policy intervention. Some climate
policy designs inadvertently provide opportunities for policy opponents to gen-
erate a variety of ‘loss frames’ during policy implementation, making implemen-
tation seem like the riskier option and supporting a return to the status quo ante.
These framing effects may also contribute to a pattern found by Stokes and Breetz
(2018, p. 77), that ‘as renewable [or] low-carbon energy technologies matured . . .
they became more politically contentious.’ While they emphasize the material
threat to fossil fuel coalitions, the increased salience of perceived loss over time
can exacerbate this dynamic and be used instrumentally by those industries and
their political allies. Disentangling material from framing effects can be difficult
when they co-vary, but our cases below also contain several instances when
framing magnified or made more salient ambiguous material costs or benefits.
For example, in the cap-and-trade case elaborated below, 60% of voters for the
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 5
right-of-centre Progressive Conservative (PC) party perceived their electricity
bills had increased in the year prior to the 2018 election following the PC’s active
campaign to link the proposed cap-and-trade program to higher electricity prices
and therefore losses. Meanwhile, only 26% of the incumbent Liberal party’s
supporters did, which suggests framing effects contributed to retrenchment
by undermining public support despite similar material conditions for all voters
(Lachapelle and Kiss 2019). Table 2 provides an overview of how perceptions
of losses and gains among the public can foster or diminish climate policy
entrenchment.
Research design and methodology
The study of three climate policies over a 20-year period in Ontario provides
a useful exploratory, theory-generating case study to identify the causal
mechanism of interpretive feedback effects in the entrenchment or retrench-
ment of climate policies. First, it compares implementation dynamics of
three different climate policies – what Gerring (2004) would classify as
a diachronic research design with an N of 6 since each policy is investigated
at initiation and implementation phases – while holding the broad institu-
tional and economic contexts constant. Second, although jurisdiction over
climate policy is shared between provincial and federal governments in
Canada, the absence of national policy until recently has situated Canadian
subnational governments as significant policy makers in the field (Simpson
et al. 2008, Boyd 2017, Rabe 2018). Third, these policies – a coal phase-out,
carbon market and renewable energy procurement – are emblematic of
major climate strategies experimented with at the subnational level in
North America over the last twenty years (Rabe 2018, Stokes and Breetz
2018). Fourth, outcomes of the three policies vary despite being initiated by
the same government, with only the coal phase-out becoming entrenched
while the others faced various levels of reversal under two different govern-
ments. Finally, the policies are the most important environmental policies
adopted in the province over the last two decades and were responsible for
Table 2. Climate policy feedbacks: interpretive effects.
Process Mechanism Indicator
Self-reinforcing
feedback
Policy design provides an opportunity for
policy supporters to create several ‘gain
frames.’ These frames increase the salience
of public benefits and policy success,
increasing policy durability
Types of ‘gain frames’ increase in
public debate during policy
implementation
Self-undermining
feedback
Policy design provides an opportunity for
policy opponents to generate ‘loss frames.’
These frames increase the salience of
public losses, making policy reversal or
termination seem acceptable to voters.
Types of ‘loss frames’ increase in
public debate during policy
implementation
6H. MILLAR ET AL.
a 19% reduction in Ontario’s GHG emissions (the majority) during that time
(Harris et al. 2015, Jordaan et al. 2017).
Implementation of these policies occurred during the tenure of the
Ontario Liberal Party, a centre-left government, which helps to control for
the broad influence of partisan ideology on policy implementation. Dalton
McGuinty led the Liberal Party to electoral victories in 2003, 2007 and 2011.
Following a change in leadership to Premier Kathleen Wynne, the Liberal
Government won a fourth election in 2014 but lost in 2018 to the Ontario
Progressive Conservative (PC) Party led by Doug Ford.
In a comparative study of carbon pricing entrenchment, Rabe (2018)
identifies electoral transitions as key ‘tests’ of policy durability: policies
which survive electoral transitions are much more likely to endure. In
Ontario, the coal phase-out withstood three electoral tests, including
a change in the party in power. However, the FIT failed the transition from
a Liberal majority government to a Liberal minority government while the
cap-and-trade system failed to survive an electoral transition to an alternative
party after the 2018 provincial election (see Figure 1). The chronological
sequencing of each case provides an opportunity to examine the individual
and overlapping dynamics of self-reinforcing and self-undermining feed-
backs over time within a single jurisdiction.
We argue that electoral politics alone cannot explain variation in entrench-
ment of these policies. All major political parties
1
favoured the coal phase-out
(Harris et al. 2015). Prior to the implementation of the FIT, both the Liberal and
PC party supported renewable portfolio standards (Progressive Conservative
Party of Ontario 2007). The termination of the cap-and-trade program in 2018
Figure 1. Ontario climate policy timeline.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 7
can be partially explained through a partisan shift from the Liberals to the PC
Government, however polling data suggests that climate policy was less of
a deciding factor in the election than immigration policy (Lachapelle and Kiss
2019). Partisan politics are less helpful in explaining either the coal phase-out’s
entrenchment or why the previous Liberal government quietly withdrew support
for the FIT when it remained in power in 2013. Instead, we argue that issue
framing and policy design generated self-reinforcing feedbacks for the coal
phase-out but self-undermining feedback effects for the FIT and cap-and-trade
programs, ultimately influencing the degree of policy entrenchment.
We use process tracing to examine the causal mechanisms in each case.
Process tracing is well suited to identifying mechanisms of policy change within
jurisdictions (Beach 2016). Researchers use process tracing to reconstruct the
historical record with close attention to the timing and sequencing of policy
decisions, followed by a close examination of how and why political decisions are
made (Stokes and Breetz 2018). To assess the presence or absence of self-
reinforcing and self-undermining feedbacks in each case we looked for changes
in coalition size and gain and loss frames during each period. For evidence of
changes in coalition size we considered public statements for and against the
policy, membership lists on coalition websites and interview data. To trace the
use of gain and loss frames we examined media accounts, policy documents, and
public opinion polling. To establish regulatory timelines and identify key policy
actors we relied on government policy documents, news releases, and websites, as
well as secondary sources, including grey literature and scholarly studies. To
identify frames we examined media articles from both the Globe and Mail and the
Toronto Star, the two largest circulation papers in the province, complemented
by analysis of policy documents. We support these findings with 6 semi-
structured interviews conducted with policy elites in 2019, including high-level
government officials directly involved in policy design as well as coalition leaders,
including environmental advocates and industry representatives.
2
Climate policy timeline and political context
This section outlines major climate policy changes and key political events in
Ontario to provide context to the case analysis that follows. The Ontario
government took the first step toward the province’s coal phase-out by
legislating the closure of the Lakeview coal station in 2001. Following the
2003 election, the newly elected Liberal Government committed to shutting
down all remaining coal power plants by 2007. It postponed the phase-out
twice, but in 2007 legislated the closure of the four remaining coal stations,
which was achieved in 2014 (Harris et al. 2015, Rosenbloom 2018).
In 2006 the McGuinty government also adopted the Renewable Energy
Standard Oer Program (RESOP), the first feed-in tariff system supporting
renewable energy development in North America (Rowlands 2007).
8H. MILLAR ET AL.
Following the 2007 provincial election, the government introduced a new
and expanded policy under the Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy
Act (GEA). The GEA’s goal was to ramp up renewable energy development.
However, the Liberal government dismantled the program in 2013 (Stokes
2016, Fast et al. 2016).
The Liberal government initiated its cap-and-trade policy in 2008 when
Ontario joined the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a regional emissions
trading system (Houle et al. 2015). Despite signing a memorandum of
cooperation with Quebec in 2008 and passing legislation enabling the gov-
ernment to establish an emissions trading system in 2009, it did not prioritize
regulatory development until the election of the Kathleen Wynne govern-
ment in 2014.
3
Wynne’s majority government pursued climate pricing as
a key policy agenda item, committing early in its mandate to collaborate with
Quebec (Morrow 2014). The government formally announced it would
implement a cap-and-trade system in April 2015 and passed enabling legis-
lation in 2016, with the regulatory framework coming into effect in
January 2017 (Morrow 2016). The Ontario government held its first auction
in March 2017 generating 472 CDN m in revenue (McCarthy 2017). While in
opposition, the PC Party initially adopted a similar pro-carbon pricing
position under Patrick Brown (Cohn 2017). However, after a scandal forced
Brown to resign the leadership, all three subsequent leadership candidates
quickly dropped carbon pricing from their platforms, including the success-
ful candidate, Doug Ford. The PC’s 2018 campaign centered on a repeal of
cap-and-trade (Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario 2018); once
elected, Ford officially terminated the program in October 2018.
Case analysis
Coal phase-out
A coalition of actors led by the Ontario Medical Association and the
Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCCA), which included a broad alliance of
environmental advocates, municipalities, health professionals, and political
parties, supported the adoption of the coal phase-out (Harris et al. 2015,
Rosenbloom 2018). Advocates deliberately adopted a public health frame
for the coal phase-out, arguing that the closure of coal plants would
fundamentally improve air quality and address an ongoing public health
crisis in Ontario (Rosenbloom 2018, p. 134). The dominant issue framing
pre-adoption was thus a health ‘gain frame’ in which closure of the coal
plants would lead to increased population health benefits and avoid losses
due to respiratory illness. Interestingly, advocates downplayed climate
benefits in the early stages of the campaign; the focus on health was
a deliberate framing strategy to broaden the base of support for the policy
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 9
among the public (Harris et al. 2015). As Jack Gibbons, Chair of the OCAA
noted, ‘mothers whose kids suffer an asthma attack – they become very
motivated . . . whereas, climate change is more distant and remote.’
4
Natural gas producers also supported the phase-out, anticipating that
their share of Ontario’s electricity mix would increase.
5
Prior to adoption,
the major opponents to the policy were the Association of Major Power
Producers of Ontario and the Power Workers Union, concerned about
economic competitiveness and job losses respectively (Harris et al. 2015,
Rosenbloom 2018). There was also some localized resistance within govern-
ment from Ministry of Energy bureaucrats concerned about lack of reliability
in the energy system.
6
These elements of policy design generated self-reinforcing feedbacks
during policy implementation. As expected, the policy generated distinct
benefits for existing natural gas and nuclear producers who increased their
share of electricity production. Because the coal-fired plants were publicly
owned, there was no incumbent coal industry to oppose the closures as in
other jurisdictions (Stokes 2013, Rosenbloom 2018). Despite these concen-
trated material benefits for producers and diffuse climate benefits for the
population at large, the overall makeup of the coalitions remained the same
during policy implementation, suggesting that resource effects had
a constrained impact on policy durability.
In contrast, during policy implementation the public health gain frame
continued to generate broadening support among the general public. As early
as 2001, surveys showed that a majority of Ontario residents supported a coal
phase-out even if it meant paying more for electricity (Harris et al. 2015, p. 11).
Observers point to the role of health benefits, evident in the reduction of smog
days in Southern Ontario, in broadening support for the policy (Winfield 2011).
While the health benefits frame remained salient throughout the period, during
later stages of implementation (2007–2014) a secondary ‘gain frame’ of GHG
reductions and climate benefits emerged, as the government re-framed the policy
as a part of its green economy agenda (Stokes 2013, Rosenbloom 2018). In
contrast, the counter-coalition led by AMPCO and the Power Workers Union
could not generate increasing salience for the loss frame regarding grid reliability.
Drawing on extensive discursive analysis of media and policy documents,
Rosenbloom (2018) finds that the counter-coalition’s use of the grid reliability
frame declined significantly throughout the implementation period. In contrast,
the twin gain frames of health and climate generated a self-reinforcing feedback
that solidified public opinion in support of the policy. In 2016 an Environmental
Defense survey found that 74% of Ontarians believed that the coal phase-out was
the right strategy for the Ontario government to take (Environmental Defence
2016), while a Clean Energy Canada survey found that 70% of Ontarians
supported a future ban on the use of coal to generate electricity by 2030
(Nanos Research, and Clean Energy Canada 2016).
10 H. MILLAR ET AL.
Ontario feed-in-tari (FIT) program
The implementation of the coal phase-out generated a gap in the provinces’
electricity supply; in the early 2000s the government increasingly looked to
renewable energy to complement natural gas and nuclear energy production to
meet demand (Rowlands 2007). A coalition of environmental advocates led by
Environmental Defense Canada and the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association
(OSEA) formed the Green Energy Alliance to push government to adopt
a renewable portfolio standard in support of the clean tech sector (Nishimura
2012, Stokes 2013). Pre-adoption, the policy had low salience among the public,
with limited opposition from automobile manufacturers and cement producers
(Nishimura 2012). Initially the FIT thus had some similarities to the coal phase-
out, with strong anticipated concentrated benefits to be allocated to energy
producers and diffuse costs distributed across a broad base of consumers.
The government’s initial communications regarding the FIT focused on
increasing the renewable energy industry and stressed local economic ben-
efits through job creation as well as community investment in solar genera-
tion (Government of Ontario 2009). Internally, the government had
concerns about meeting electricity demand and reducing local resistance to
renewable energy production in rural communities throughout Southern
Ontario (Hill and Knott 2010). During the coal phase-out, the government
decided that the approval process within the Ministry of Environment
needed to be streamlined.
7
To address that obstacle, it uploaded the siting
process to the provincial level, removing municipal autonomy, and simplify-
ing the approval process (McRobert et al. 2016).
The McGuinty government designed the FIT to benefit the renewable
energy sector, which facilitated a strong coalition of support among environ-
mental advocates and wind and solar producers. However, the FIT’s design
also inadvertently provided opportunities for policy opponents to wield several
‘loss frames’ that undermined public support. Opposition came from grass-
roots organizations and individuals contesting wind farm development in
Southern Ontario (Fast et al. 2016). Local communities opposed the FIT for
two key reasons. First, the decision to remove municipal autonomy angered
several communities who perceived the loss of municipal planning powers as
unjust (Walker and Baxter 2017). Second, during implementation, residents
became increasingly concerned about potential health risks from wind tur-
bines, including detrimental effects of noise pollution (Stokes 2013). Research
suggests that the policy design of the FIT likely had a strong influence on the
salience of health risks in local communities since health was one of the few
grounds upon which residents could appeal siting decisions (Fast and Mabee
2015, McRobert et al. 2016). The intensity of local opposition in Southern
Ontario ultimately prompted the Ontario Federation of Agriculture to switch
positions on the policy, weakening the pro-policy coalition.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 11
Beyond health and municipal autonomy loss frames, the FIT was also
susceptible to counter-coalition frames regarding rising electricity costs.
The FIT’s design initially provided a very generous rate for solar photo-
voltaic producers ($0.802-$0.443/kWh), which led critics to observe that
the government provided higher prices to RE providers than they would
through the wholesale market (Stokes 2013, Winfield and Dolter 2014).
Electricity prices in Ontario result from two key components: the market
price and a ‘global adjustment cost’ (GAC), which is the difference between
the market price and guaranteed prices paid to regulated and contracted
generators. Modelling suggests that increases to the GAC were responsible
for the majority of Ontario’s electricity price increases from 2008–2017
(Auditor General of Ontario 2017). In 2008 the GAC accounted for 10% of
the average annual electricity charge; in 2016 the GAC rose to 85% of the
average price. Approximately a third of the average annual GAC is gener-
ated by payments to renewable energy producers. The remainder is based
on legacy commitments to nuclear, hydro, and natural gas producers
(Auditor General of Ontario 2017). However, during implementation of
the FIT, policy entrepreneurs in the PC Party used rising electricity rates to
exploit the public’s loss-aversion by placing the responsibility for rising
rates solely on renewable energy production. This framing intensified
during the 2011 election campaign: the PC’s electoral platform vowed ‘to
stop the expensive energy experiments that are driving up hydro bills . . .
We will end the feed-in tariff program that . . . pays up to 15 times the usual
cost of the hydro’ (Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario 2011, p. 14).
Electricity rates were salient throughout the 2011 electoral campaign and
the subsequent loss of several Liberal ridings in rural areas signalled to
policy makers the lower levels of support among Ontario rural residents
toward green initiatives in the energy sector, ultimately leading to the
termination of the policy in 2013 (Stokes 2016). Despite ongoing public
support for renewable energy
8
it has become common for both journalists
and politicians to attribute rising electricity rates to the FIT (e.g. Globe and
Mail 2015a, 2015b). This case thus demonstrates the ways in which policy
entrepreneurs (in this case, the PC Party) can trigger self-undermining
feedback effects by strategically using loss frames in public debate to erode
public support for existing policies. By framing the FIT as responsible for
a range of losses, the PC party made the termination of the FIT seem like
the less risky choice than staying the course, strengthening public support
for policy termination. The combination of perceived health risks, removal
of municipal control, and rising electricity costs overshadowed the con-
centrated material benefits to RE producers and diffuse environmental
benefits to the general public generated by the policy. The dominance of
loss frames in public discourse made it difficult for the provincial govern-
ment to justify its ongoing support for the FIT (Fast et al. 2016).
12 H. MILLAR ET AL.
Ontario’s cap-and-trade policy
Ontario’s cap-and-trade program was vulnerable to self-undermining feedbacks
because despite providing diffuse climate benefits to all Ontarians, the policy
design created costs for a concentrated constituency: emissions-intensive trade-
exposed industries (EITEs). During the regulatory development phase from 2014
to 2016, the government consulted extensively with EITEs concerned about
carbon leakage.
9
A broad coalition of environmental and business interests
under the umbrella of the Clean Economy Alliance, including Environmental
Defense and the Cement Association of Canada, supported Ontario’s cap-and-
trade program.
10
During this time a counter coalition comprising the Canadian
Fuel Association, Small Canadian Manufacturing and Exporters, the Automotive
Parts Manufacturers Association of Canada, and oil and gas companies
11
also
emerged. The coalition expressed economic concerns regarding carbon leakage
and preferences for a carbon tax rather than an emissions trading system (Lefko
2017). To manage these political dynamics, the government focused on mitigat-
ing costs for EITEs during the design process and decided to provide free
allowances to all industries in the initial phase of the program.
12
Despite this
carrot, industry emitters were still uneasy about the distribution of allowances
post 2020 (McCarthy 2015).
13
The government also tried to manage political dynamics by providing
benefits to targeted groups through the 2016 Climate Action Plan. The Plan
aimed to generate substantial diffuse support for the policy by providing
financial incentives to homeowners for retrofits, electric vehicle manufacturers,
producers of energy-efficiency goods and services, and renewable energy
producers and storage companies (McCarthy and Blackwell 2016, Cohn
2016b). The Climate Plan also explicitly targeted low-income residents,
directly through subsidies on energy bills and indirectly through improving
energy efficiency in social housing (Government of Ontario 2016). However,
the government was unable to implement most of these programs prior to the
2018 election. During the early stages of program implementation, the coali-
tions in support or opposition to the policy remained static, with very few
organizations other than members of the Clean Economy Alliance publicly
supporting the policy (McCarthy and Blackwell 2016).
14
The cap-and-trade program was also vulnerable to issue framing that
exacerbated perceptions of loss among the general public. Unlike previous
governments that framed climate action as either solving a public health crisis
(coal phase-out) or alleviating an energy crisis (the FIT), the Wynne govern-
ment used climate benefits as the primary ‘gain frame’ for the policy. The
government strongly supported the scientific case for climate change, evident
in the text of the 2016 Climate Action Plan: ‘Science has confirmed that climate
change is profoundly affecting this planet . . . People and businesses want to
know how to change’ (Government of Ontario 2016, p. 7).
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 13
The government was slow to communicate consumer gain frames (Raymond
2019). It tasked the Ministry of the Environment, which led development of the
Climate Action Plan, to develop and coordinate new green programs across the
whole of government while also developing a communications plan. As
a regulatory department, however, the Ministry had limited experience develop-
ing ‘retail’ communications that coalesced around gain frames.
15
In addition,
cap-and-trade was vulnerable to challenges that it generated losses for the general
public. In the 2016 Climate Action Plan, the government costed the program as
generating a 13 CDN/month increase in household energy costs (Government of
Ontario 2016). Although this cost was substantially lower than projected
increases under a carbon tax, policy opponents were able to frame the policy as
generating ongoing losses for suburban households (Cohn 2016a, Benzie 2016a).
This population together with rural communities already negatively affected by
the FIT provided a large audience for loss frames. In media debates the PCs used
three core loss frames to build public opposition: the policy was simply a gas tax,
it would increase household prices just as the FIT increased electricity prices, and
it would generate a slush fund that government would likely mismanage (Globe
and Mail 2015a, 2015b, Cohn 2016a, 2016b, Progressive Conservative Party of
Ontario 2018).
The loss frames propagated by the PCs resonated with the electorate. In
a poll conducted by Forum Research (2016) 59% of respondents disapproved
of the cap-and-trade plan when explained in simple terms; when respondents
were presented with information regarding increases to household costs and
fuel prices disapproval rose to 69%. Conversely, when Forum Research high-
lighted the policy’s climate benefits, only 46% approved of the government
directing raised funds to support GHG mitigation (Forum Research 2016,
Benzie 2016b). Public opinion data suggests that although climate was not
a deciding factor in determining vote choice in the election, the PCs’ linkage of
cap-and-trade with increasing energy prices did resonate with their base
(Lachapelle and Kiss 2019, p. 973). In their election survey, Lachapelle and
Kiss (2019) found that 60% of PC voters felt that their electricity bills had
increased in the past year compared to only 26% of Liberal voters. The cap-and
-trade case illustrates the ways in which policy entrepreneurs can use percep-
tions of loss strategically for political gain, generating self-undermining feed-
back effects that erode coalitions of support.
Discussion and conclusions
Our findings suggest that a core dimension of climate policy entrenchment is the
degree to which policy designs, in particular the communication efforts of
governments, can increase the salience of gains and losses among mass publics.
In the case of the coal phase-out, the health ‘gain frame’ generated broad public
support that complemented support for the policy by environmental groups,
14 H. MILLAR ET AL.
natural gas producers, and the nuclear industry. These factors generated strong
self-reinforcing feedbacks that helped to entrench the coal phase-out among both
provincial political parties in power.
Yet both the FIT and the cap-and-trade programs failed to communicate
strong ‘gain frames’ of consumer benefits to the public, an aspect of policy
design that has contributed to successful climate policy implementation in the
United States (Raymond 2016, Rabe 2018). Instead, public discourse in Ontario
centred on perceptions of loss, including health risks, loss of local autonomy,
rising electricity rates, increasing household costs, and government misman-
agement. Policy opponents successfully framed the FIT, and later cap-and-
trade, as increasing energy prices for the general public.
16
In the absence of
strong narratives about public benefits, narratives of public loss gained traction
in public discourse, leading to the Liberal’s termination of the FIT in 2013 and
the reversal of cap-and-trade as soon as the PCs came into power in July 2018.
In sum, this study demonstrates that how policy makers frame and
communicate policies can have a significant impact on policy durability.
Gain frames can solidify public support for a climate policy, strengthening
pro-policy coalitions and legitimizing governments to stay the course.
Conversely, loss frames can undermine public support, strengthening coun-
ter-coalitions and making implemented climate policies seem like a risky
course of action in the eyes of the public. Interpretive feedback effects thus
function as an intervening mechanism between policy design and entrench-
ment, as policy entrepreneurs use gain and loss frames strategically to
strengthen coalitions and generate mass support for their preferred policies.
The research design here provides some analytic leverage to support the
broader applicability of the importance of interpretive policy feedbacks
beyond the Ontario case. Further research could help determine whether
policy makers supporting decarbonization can simply avoid narratives of loss
in order to generate self-reinforcing feedbacks or whether successful climate
policies need to generate dominant narratives of gain in addition to high
increasing returns to industry entrants, limited costs to incumbent indus-
tries, and substantial material benefits to voters in order to entrench.
Notes
1. Ontario has three main parties: the Liberal Party, the Progressive Conservative
Party, and the New Democratic Party.
2. Interviewees included key members of the Ontario climate policy subsystem
identified through policy documents and media articles; subsequent intervie-
wees were selected through snowball sampling.
3. Political observers suggest the delay was motivated in part by the failure of
federal Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift program in the 2008 federal
election (Cohn 2016a), the Great Recession (Boyd 2017) and the salience of
carbon pricing and renewable procurement policies in the 2011 election
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 15
(Houle et al. 2015). During this time the government continued to work
internally to plan the institutional framework necessary for cap and trade
(Personal interview, government official, 1 March 2019).
4. Personal Interview, Jack Gibbons, Chair Ontario Clean Air Alliance, 8 February
2019.
5. Personal interview, government official, 1 March 2019.
6. Personal Interview, Jack Gibbons, Chair Ontario Clean Air Alliance, 8 February
2019.
7. Personal interview, government official, 1 March 2019.
8. A survey conducted by Environmental Defense in 2016 shows that ‘80% of
respondents said that they would like to see Ontario generate more power
from renewable sources’ (Environmental Defence 2016).
9. Personal interview, government official, March 1 2019. Carbon leakage refers
to the phenomenon in which carbon-intensive industries flee jurisdictions
with high production standards or carbon prices to neighbouring jurisdictions,
resulting in an increase in GHG emissions in countries with less stringent
climate policies.
10. Personal interview, Adam Auer, Vice President Environment and Sustainability,
Cement Association of Canada, 1 March 2019; Personal interview, Keith Brooks,
Programs Director, Environmental Defence, 22 February 2019.
11. Enbridge Gas Distribution, Union Gas, Suncor Energy, Imperial Oil all
expressed displeasure at the policy in 2016, however all four companies
participated in the 2018 linked auction (McCarthy 2018).
12. Personal interview, John Godfrey, Former Special Advisor to the Ontario
Government on Climate Change, 22 February 2019.
13. Personal interview, Adam Auer, Vice President Environment and Sustainability,
Cement Association of Canada, 1 March 2019; Personal interview, Keith Brooks,
Programs Director, Environmental Defence, 22 February 2019.
14. Personal interview, government official, 1 March 2019.
15. Personal interview, John Godfrey, Former Special Advisor to the Ontario
Government on Climate Change, 22 February 2019. Personal interview, govern-
ment official, 1 March 2019. Personal interview, Anonymous, 15 March 2019.
16. Personal interview, Keith Brooks, Programs Director, Environmental Defence,
22 February 2019. Personal interview, Jack Gibbons 8 February 2019.
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2019 meetings of the Western
Political Science Association, the Canadian Political Science Association, and the
International Public Policy Association. The authors are grateful to all discussants
and participants for their constructive feedback. Special thanks to Leah Stokes,
Daniel Rosenbloom, and the anonymous reviewers of Environmental Politics for
their insightful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
16 H. MILLAR ET AL.
Funding
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 494836)
provided funding for this research.
ORCID
Heather Millar http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5859-541X
Steven Bernstein http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0115-084X
Matthew Hoffmann http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9325-4186
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