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This research provides the first empirical evidence on an aspect of a topical debate about firms’ claims over their use of renewable electricity. Increasingly firms – many among them the biggest globally – say they use renewable electricity (RE). Unless they generate their own electricity, they often make this claim based on the use of green tariffs or certificates that document the production of a quantity of RE. However, several studies indicate that such contractual instruments have done little to increase RE generation capacity in Europe. Furthermore, it has been argued this activity could impede other actions by firms that reduce carbon emissions. As firms frequently attribute zero emissions to their electricity consumption covered by these renewable electricity contractual instruments, their reported emissions can plummet. This could reduce the motivation for activities such as improving energy efficiency – a possibility which has not been investigated before empirically. \ud \ud Focusing on 11 of the largest firms in Europe, I ask what factors influence their voluntary greenhouse gas mitigation choices regarding renewable and low-carbon electricity contractual instruments. Secondly, I ask what effect their use has had on their other greenhouse gas mitigation activities. Taking an institutional theory and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) perspective, I integrate documentary evidence on firms’ carbon emissions and mitigation activities – in some cases employing more than a decade of data - with interviews with managers and senior staff. I conduct multiple case studies, selecting firms to facilitate analytical generalisation (Yin 2014).\ud \ud A key insight into the influences on firms was the power of CSR ratings agencies. I found instances of firms making or considering changes to operational practice – such as renewable electricity contractual instrument use - due to rating agencies. Displacement and potential displacement of firms’ focus on other mitigating activities was found in limited circumstances. For energy efficiency/savings, this depended on three circumstances which I characterize. I assess the possible outcomes if expenditure on contractual instruments had been spent instead on internal mitigating activities e.g. energy efficiency or on offsets. Based on my findings, I recommend specific changes to carbon reporting practices that are relevant to firms, policy-makers and standard-setters.

Since the 2015 launch of the Rockefeller Foundation Lancet Commission on planetary health,1 an enormous groundswell of interest in planetary health education has emerged across many disciplines, institutions, and geographical regions. Advancing these global efforts in planetary health education will equip the next generation of scholars to address crucial questions in this emerging field and support the development of a community of practice. To provide a foundation for the growing interest and efforts in this field, the Planetary Health Alliance has facilitated the first attempt to create a set of principles for planetary health education that intersect education at all levels, across all scales, and in all regions of the world—ie, a set of cross-cutting principles.

Increasingly, policy-makers rely on forecasts to set targets for environmental and health protection. I examine the UK Air Quality Strategies (AQS) for particulate matter (1997-2007). Here policy-makers select and articulate visions for technological and policy developments in order to set targets and policies to achieve them. Despite growing evidence for adverse health effects of particulates, challenging targets in 1997 were followed by two revisions of Objectives without introducing measures for reducing pollution. In 2007 more challenging targets were resumed. This thesis is a study of the formation and evolution of a policy framework: of the interactions and contrasting roles of scientific expertise, wider political discourse, and the ‘futures’ presented by actors involved in the policy process. Sociology of Expectations has previously examined the roles of visions in innovation processes. I extended this framework to examine dynamics of visions in the policy-making process. My findings were based on analysis of visions and discourses identified in texts, model data, and interviews.\ud Whilst none of the explanatory factors alone accounted the developments in the AQS, together they provide an explanation of change which highlights the role of learning by policy-makers . Visions for technological development articulated in each version of the AQS were in line with the dominant visions articulated in central government, but over time policy-makers responsible for the Strategy used them to present options for taking action on pollution. Co-construction of the AQS and modelled forecasts enabled policy-makers responsible for the Strategy to articulate visions for technologies and policies to promote taking action to reduce pollutants, and this led to the more action-oriented Strategy in 2007.\ud This thesis proposes that visions can change more quickly than wider political discourses, and as such can provide opportunities for the introduction of new discourses.