Exploring UNFCCC’s Market-based Climate Interventions in Kenya’s Large-scale Renewable Energy Market

The past decades have seen a general embrace of market-based approaches and instruments in governing all manner of socio-economic concerns. The environment is not excluded. Since the 1980s, market-based environmental governance has become popular in tackling issues ranging from climate change and resource depletion to biodiversity loss. This paper explores the structural conditions that shape such market interventions in environmental governance. More specifically, it analyses the assemblage of different forms and mechanisms of market intervening actions in today’s renewable energy markets by drawing on Michel Foucault’s structural formulation on free-market governance. The paper shows that while Foucault’s formulation on market intervening actions (consisting of “regulatory” and “organizing” actions) still has merit in contemporary market governance, its application has become less encompassing. The Foucauldian formulation has largely left out an important category of market interventions that is mainly financial in nature. In recent decades, such financial interventions have increasingly acted as catalysts for better market efficiency – especially in developing markets – acting in closer proximity to the market than regulatory and organizing actions. The paper elaborates this new category of intervening actions as “catalyzing” actions. For illustration, the paper applies the more complete formulation on market intervening actions in analyzing UNFCCC’s climate governance and financing interventions in Kenya’s large-scale renewable energy market. The analysis on data from expert interviews with actors in the energy, environment, and financial management sectors in Kenya, as well as on document and reports analysis. Keywords: UNFCCC, Market-based Interventions, Foucault, Climate governance, Financing, Renewable Energy Markets, Kenya