Lights and Shadows of Climate Change: Businessmen, State and Civil Society Facing the Closure of Coal-Fired Thermoelectric Power Plants in Chile

Abstract

Thispaper develops the concept of climatization for policy studies. Climatization is the “process through which an issue, actor or institution is framed as related to anthropogenic climate change” (Aykut, Maertens, 2021: 502). We study climatization in the case of the coal plants phase out in Chile, which formally began in 2018, and where actors from the private and public sectors, and civil society, participate at different levels (global, national and subnational). Throughout the process, every actor has expressed concerns about reducing carbon emissions. However, a detailed examination, based on open sources (press, social networks) and interviews, reveals the diversity in the appropriation of the climate problem, which results in the invisible nature of local environmental problems. The results of the study contribute to the global research agenda on “decarbonization consensus” (Bringel, Svampa, 2023: 51) and to the study of environmental policy and particularly energy transitions in Latin America and fossil fuels phase out.

Keywords
Environmental Policy; Climate Change; Framing; Multilevel Analysis; Coal Phase Out