Heather Millar’s research while affiliated with University of New Brunswick and other places

Cheap and abundant energy is an important incentive for the proliferation of cryptocurrency mining farms. With China's crackdown on bitcoin mining, investors have moved to the United States, Scandinavian countries, and Canada. From the perspective of business, these jurisdictions provide cheap, reliable electricity within a stable institutional context. At the same time, cryptocurrency mining has the potential to generate instability, not only through material demands on the capacity of the electricity grid, but also in jeopardizing governments' climate goals. This article examines some strategies used by the industry to seek out favorable regulatory environments and take advantage of energy sources and infrastructures, through the case of HIVE blockchain technology, a mining company in Atlantic Canada. The article explains how in contrast with negative reports of marginal employment opportunities and drains on domestic energy supplies, bitcoin miners are developing new narratives to make cryptocurrency mining investment attractive to governments and the public. We find that HIVE has leveraged intra-provincial regulatory differences to expand operations and is currently using a "reverse battery" narrative to improve regulatory and public acceptance of cryptocurrency mining.

Fossil fuel proponents and governments have framed natural gas as a “bridge fuel” necessary for a smooth global energy transition. However, environmental and climate justice groups warn that natural gas will lock in high carbon pathways, in addition to creating significant environmental harms and health risks for affected communities. This contestation around the framing of natural gas reflects a process of interpretive politics, namely the struggle of different actors to define policy problems and present potential solutions to influence policy outcomes. We explore the interpretive politics of natural gas in Canada by analyzing government climate plans and press releases produced by industry associations and other relevant, primarily non-governmental, organizations in the post-Paris era. We identify three distinct variations of the bridge fuel narrative around the purported clean energy benefits of natural gas driven by industry associations and provincial governments. Though the language of clean energy benefits is spreading, the meaning varies significantly by regional context. The malleable position of natural gas as a source of interpretive contestation has important implications for future coalition-building and decarbonization.

This article examines how ideational factors shape policy making during crisis conditions. Crises can generate ‘problem uncertainty’, in which policymakers are uncertain about the nature of policy problems. Existing studies have linked such conditions to processes of policy learning. Yet crises can also trigger ‘policy urgency’, where policymakers’ preference for immediate policy action is paramount. This study suggests that bounded emulation, in which policymakers copy available solutions without learning, is related to perceptions of policy urgency. To probe the plausibility of the framework the study conducts a comparative analysis of value-added tax reform in Ontario and British Columbia, drawing on 41 semi-structured interviews, policy documents and news articles. The study finds that high uncertainty and moderate urgency facilitated policy learning in Ontario, while moderate uncertainty and high urgency fostered bounded emulation in British Columbia. The article identifies the implications of the findings for future research on ideas and policy change.

This study demonstrates how interpretive feedback functions as an intervening mechanism during policy implementation that helps explain variation in subnational 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-tarriff (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 find 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.

This study uses policy learning frameworks to explain variation in processes of hydraulic fracturing regulatory development in Canadian provinces. Using a cross‐case comparison of British Columbia and Nova Scotia, the article demonstrates that differences in problem uncertainty and institutional insularity in each province determined modes of technical, social, and political learning in each province. In British Columbia elected officials framed LNG as a safe, clean energy source generating economic benefits. These frames made it difficult for anti‐fracking advocates to increase the salience of environmental risks and scientific uncertainty. Low problem uncertainty and high institutional insularity fostered processes of technical learning within the BC Oil and Gas Commission focused on single‐issue regulations. In Nova Scotia, an external review provided an ad hoc institutional venue through which environmental advocates, residents, and experts could increase the salience of scientific uncertainty and dread environmental risks. These conditions fostered collective processes of social learning among anti‐fracking advocates and political learning among elected officials, resulting in a ban.