Greening Energy Politics in India: Assessing Contributions of the Clean Development Mechanism in the Wind Energy Sector.

Shortcomings in meeting national energy policy objectives as well as threats posed by climate change put pressure on Indian energy politics to consider alternative options such as enhanced renewable energy deployment. The challenge is how to assist emerging economies such as India to leapfrog a polluting development path by facilitating the transition to alternative sources of power generation. The research question tackled in this paper hence asks how and to what extent new modes of governance such as the CDM contribute to 'greening' India by facilitating the diffusion of renewable energy? Ecological modernisation theories argue that deviating from conventional development paths is possible and emphasise the potential for leapfrogging development stages. The central argument of this paper holds that international policy instruments such as the CDM contribute to greening Indian energy policy firstly by enhancing renewable energy deployment through technology transfer and secondly by instilling a political re-orientation through norms diffusion. Yet, the embeddedness approach cautions against overly optimistic assessments arguing that and alternative development path is possible, however, under the conditions that context conditions and path dependencies are given due consideration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]