In the UK climate change and energy have converged on the policy agenda. We discuss the implications for theories of policy change based on well-defined networks located within single, discrete, policy domains. We suggest that such approaches struggle to account for the dynamics of change in conditions of policy convergence. The issue of climate change has opened up and destabilised the UK energy policy sector, but this process has been surprisingly free of conflict, despite radical policy shifts. To date, convergence of the energy and climate change sectors has largely occurred at a discursive level, and we focus our attention on a number of different, but largely complementary, storylines about solutions to climate change. We draw on ideas about sociotechnical regime transitions, first, to explore why the storylines are not in obvious conflict, and, second, to identify small-scale niches where tensions in storylines do emerge as discourse is translated into material reality. © 2008 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Studies in Human Society
Research Group:	Sociology
Research Field:	Sociology and Social Studies of Science and Technology
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
Author:	Lovell, HC (Associate Professor Heather Lovell)
ID Code:	99603
Year Published:	2009
Web of Science® Times Cited:	64
Deposited By:	Social Sciences
Deposited On:	2015-03-30
Last Modified:	2015-05-13
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