Periodic Reporting for period 1 - JUSTCARBON (Just Carbon Transitions)
Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2026-01-31
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
The Justcarbon project addresses a critical and evolving area in environmental governance: the role of domestic politics, expertise, and institutional structures in shaping national climate and environmental policies over time. The project's core objective is to comparatively analyze how Denmark and Norway develop their "environmental states" between 1990 and 2024, focusing on state structures, the organization of external policy advice, and the evolution of policy ideas relating to environmental welfare.
The political and strategic context for the study is rooted in the transformation inaugurated by the 2015 Paris Agreement, where the responsibility for implementing climate mitigation was decisively shifted to national governments via nationally determined contributions (NDCs). This shift reinforced the importance of national experts capable of translating global climate imperatives into concrete national regulatory frameworks. Responding to this development, The project engages with emerging calls for a "post-IPCC" research agenda that centers on the domestic expert politics of the green transition, beyond an earlier focus on international climate science advocacy (see. Frandsen and Hasselbach 2024). Furthermore, studies of domestic expert politics have tended to focus primarily on the role of economists as sources of policy advice and the dominance of economic reasoning as the language of the state. The present project extends such a focus to situate them vis-à-vis other experts and interest representatives.
The project builds upon and advances the sociological concept of the "environmental state"—an empirical-analytical framework capturing how governmental institutions organize societal activities to minimize ecological degradation while safeguarding environmental rights (Rea and Frickel, 2023). It critically extends this framework to enable systematic, comparative analysis across national contexts, focusing not only on protective environmental and climatic welfare but also on tensions with developmental and growth focused policy approaches.
By integrating sociological theories of state structure and expertise with political science approaches to Policy Advisory Systems, the project establishes a comprehensive comparative framework. This framework operationalizes key mechanisms in environmental state development, including institutional histories, structures of access to technoscientific expertise (through Public Policy Advisory Bodies), and the ideational content of environmental policy advice—specifically, prevailing conceptions of nature and policy instrument preferences.
Through a systematic comparison of Denmark and Norway over a thirty-year period, The project provides unique insights into the structural and ideational evolution of national environmental governance. It illuminates how shifts in the organization of expertise and advisory systems relate to environmental and climate policy outcomes, offering a deeper understanding of the political dynamics underpinning national green transitions.
The contributions of the project are significant both academically and practically. Academically, it contributes to the sociology of expertise, comparative policy studies, and environmental governance research by proposing an extended, operationalized model of the environmental state that allows for temporal and cross-national comparison. Practically, it offers policymakers and stakeholders a clearer understanding of how advisory structures and dominant policy ideas shape national responses to environmental and climate challenges.
In sum, the Justcarbon project provides a deeper, comparative understanding of how domestic expertise and institutional arrangements mediate the translation of global climate ambitions into national realities, contributing to the broader goal of effective and equitable environmental governance.
The political and strategic context for the study is rooted in the transformation inaugurated by the 2015 Paris Agreement, where the responsibility for implementing climate mitigation was decisively shifted to national governments via nationally determined contributions (NDCs). This shift reinforced the importance of national experts capable of translating global climate imperatives into concrete national regulatory frameworks. Responding to this development, The project engages with emerging calls for a "post-IPCC" research agenda that centers on the domestic expert politics of the green transition, beyond an earlier focus on international climate science advocacy (see. Frandsen and Hasselbach 2024). Furthermore, studies of domestic expert politics have tended to focus primarily on the role of economists as sources of policy advice and the dominance of economic reasoning as the language of the state. The present project extends such a focus to situate them vis-à-vis other experts and interest representatives.
The project builds upon and advances the sociological concept of the "environmental state"—an empirical-analytical framework capturing how governmental institutions organize societal activities to minimize ecological degradation while safeguarding environmental rights (Rea and Frickel, 2023). It critically extends this framework to enable systematic, comparative analysis across national contexts, focusing not only on protective environmental and climatic welfare but also on tensions with developmental and growth focused policy approaches.
By integrating sociological theories of state structure and expertise with political science approaches to Policy Advisory Systems, the project establishes a comprehensive comparative framework. This framework operationalizes key mechanisms in environmental state development, including institutional histories, structures of access to technoscientific expertise (through Public Policy Advisory Bodies), and the ideational content of environmental policy advice—specifically, prevailing conceptions of nature and policy instrument preferences.
Through a systematic comparison of Denmark and Norway over a thirty-year period, The project provides unique insights into the structural and ideational evolution of national environmental governance. It illuminates how shifts in the organization of expertise and advisory systems relate to environmental and climate policy outcomes, offering a deeper understanding of the political dynamics underpinning national green transitions.
The contributions of the project are significant both academically and practically. Academically, it contributes to the sociology of expertise, comparative policy studies, and environmental governance research by proposing an extended, operationalized model of the environmental state that allows for temporal and cross-national comparison. Practically, it offers policymakers and stakeholders a clearer understanding of how advisory structures and dominant policy ideas shape national responses to environmental and climate challenges.
In sum, the Justcarbon project provides a deeper, comparative understanding of how domestic expertise and institutional arrangements mediate the translation of global climate ambitions into national realities, contributing to the broader goal of effective and equitable environmental governance.
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
The Justcarbon project undertook a structured set of technical and scientific activities to examine the evolution of environmental states and policy advisory systems in Denmark and Norway from 1990 to 2024. The research activities included comprehensive data collection, archival research, content coding, and dataset construction.
Data collection was conducted, building on initial work by Siri Hessvedt, Johan Christensen, and Søren Lund Frandsen. This phase involved assembling a dataset of all publicly accessible Public Policy Advisory Bodies (PPABs) associated with ministries responsible for climate and energy policy, natural resource development, or environmental protection in Denmark and Norway. Particular attention was given to compiling information on PPAB membership, report outputs, and mandates. Additionally, central indicators of environmental and climate policy development were collected to contextualize the advisory systems' activities. Furthermore, the project collected historic information on state structure.
In Norway, the focus centered on the NOU (Norwegian Official Reports) system, which provided a standardized and systematically catalogued source of advisory output. In Denmark, the diversity and less formalized nature of advisory bodies required substantial methodological decisions to ensure comparability. Danish advisory bodies were systematically mapped through reports such as Hof og Stat and administrative listings generated in response to parliamentary questions. A key operational choice involved filtering advisory bodies to include only those explicitly mandated to provide public policy advice, thereby excluding bodies responsible solely for policy implementation or oversight.
The project built a comprehensive dataset encompassing report metadata, coding of advisory report contents, and detailed authorship information. Content coding of PPAB reports was performed to track ideational shifts in environmental and climate policy advice over time.
From these activities, the project produced several important scientific outcomes. First, Justcarbon developed a comparative framework for structural and ideational analysis that integrates sociological approaches to the environmental state with political science research on Policy Advisory Systems. Second, the project generated new empirical insights into the trajectory of environmental and climate policymaking in Denmark and Norway over the past three decades, particularly in relation to tensions between environmental protection and developmental objectives, and between environmental and climate policy objectives. Third, it provided comparative analysis of how policy advisory systems operate in the two countries, highlighting variations in advisory structures, expert engagement, and ideational content.
The main scientific deliverables resulting from these activities are:
• Laage-Thomsen, Jakob (2025). "Decision-makers, Administrators and Advisors: The politico-administrative and politico-ideational comparative foundations of Policy Advisory Systems." Chapter for the Handbook of Policy Advice (Edward Elgar Publishing). Currently in proofreading.
• Laage-Thomsen, Jakob, Frandsen, Søren Lund, Christensen, Johan, and Mangset, Marte (2025). "Embattled and Resurgent Environmental States: Death, Resurrection and Transformation?" Working paper, to be prepared for submission to leading journals such as Policy Studies Journal, Politics & Society, or Socio-Economic Review. Submission is expected in June.
These outputs consolidate the project's contribution to the sociology of expertise, comparative policy analysis, and the study of environmental governance, and are set to provide a robust basis for ongoing scholarly and policy discussions on the green transition.
Data collection was conducted, building on initial work by Siri Hessvedt, Johan Christensen, and Søren Lund Frandsen. This phase involved assembling a dataset of all publicly accessible Public Policy Advisory Bodies (PPABs) associated with ministries responsible for climate and energy policy, natural resource development, or environmental protection in Denmark and Norway. Particular attention was given to compiling information on PPAB membership, report outputs, and mandates. Additionally, central indicators of environmental and climate policy development were collected to contextualize the advisory systems' activities. Furthermore, the project collected historic information on state structure.
In Norway, the focus centered on the NOU (Norwegian Official Reports) system, which provided a standardized and systematically catalogued source of advisory output. In Denmark, the diversity and less formalized nature of advisory bodies required substantial methodological decisions to ensure comparability. Danish advisory bodies were systematically mapped through reports such as Hof og Stat and administrative listings generated in response to parliamentary questions. A key operational choice involved filtering advisory bodies to include only those explicitly mandated to provide public policy advice, thereby excluding bodies responsible solely for policy implementation or oversight.
The project built a comprehensive dataset encompassing report metadata, coding of advisory report contents, and detailed authorship information. Content coding of PPAB reports was performed to track ideational shifts in environmental and climate policy advice over time.
From these activities, the project produced several important scientific outcomes. First, Justcarbon developed a comparative framework for structural and ideational analysis that integrates sociological approaches to the environmental state with political science research on Policy Advisory Systems. Second, the project generated new empirical insights into the trajectory of environmental and climate policymaking in Denmark and Norway over the past three decades, particularly in relation to tensions between environmental protection and developmental objectives, and between environmental and climate policy objectives. Third, it provided comparative analysis of how policy advisory systems operate in the two countries, highlighting variations in advisory structures, expert engagement, and ideational content.
The main scientific deliverables resulting from these activities are:
• Laage-Thomsen, Jakob (2025). "Decision-makers, Administrators and Advisors: The politico-administrative and politico-ideational comparative foundations of Policy Advisory Systems." Chapter for the Handbook of Policy Advice (Edward Elgar Publishing). Currently in proofreading.
• Laage-Thomsen, Jakob, Frandsen, Søren Lund, Christensen, Johan, and Mangset, Marte (2025). "Embattled and Resurgent Environmental States: Death, Resurrection and Transformation?" Working paper, to be prepared for submission to leading journals such as Policy Studies Journal, Politics & Society, or Socio-Economic Review. Submission is expected in June.
These outputs consolidate the project's contribution to the sociology of expertise, comparative policy analysis, and the study of environmental governance, and are set to provide a robust basis for ongoing scholarly and policy discussions on the green transition.
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
The Justcarbon project has produced results that advance the state of the art in the study of environmental governance, the sociology of expertise, and policy advisory systems. These results contribute both to academic field-building and to a better understanding of advisory structures crucial to contemporary green transitions.
The project developed a novel comparative framework for analyzing environmental states and policy advisory systems by integrating sociological approaches to the environmental state with political science research on Policy Advisory Systems (PAS). This theoretical and methodological contribution provides a new basis for systematic, comparative analysis across countries and over time—an advancement over previous research that tended to focus on single-country case studies or sector-specific analyses.
Empirically, Justcarbon assembled a unique dataset covering three decades of environmental and climate advisory activities in Denmark and Norway, including metadata on Public Policy Advisory Bodies (PPABs), their membership compositions, and their outputs. This allowed for a detailed, comparative examination of the evolving relationship between environmental and developmental policy concerns within national advisory systems.
Key findings reveal that despite earlier assumptions of greater political independence in the Norwegian advisory system, the operational use of PPABs in Denmark and Norway shows significant similarities. In both countries, the representation of traditional stakeholders (interest groups and civil servants) in PPABs has declined over time, while academic experts and business leaders have become more prominent—particularly in Denmark. Within the academic fields represented, Norway shows persistent dominance of Economics and Law, while Denmark is characterized by stronger dominance of Economics alone, with notably little involvement of legal scholars. Which correlates with a stronger emphasis on legal policy instruments in advisory outputs.
The project also uncovered important periodizations in the historical development of environmental and climate states in both countries:
• In Denmark, a relatively robust environmental state in the 1990s was weakened in the early 2000s, with climate and developmental concerns dominating advisory structures for two decades. A partial resurgence of environmental concerns has been observed since 2022 through initiatives such as the green tax reform and the establishment of the Biodiversity Council. These transformations coinced with novel political reforms to integrate land-use reforms with carbon taxation of agriculture, anchored in a new ministry solely tasked with this objective.
• In Norway, the environmental state remained embattled, facing opposition from resource-focused sectors, yet achieved periods of institutional strengthening from 2008 onwards, integrating climate and environmental concerns. Nevertheless, the finance ministry has maintained significant influence over climate policy, resulting in later carbon tax increases, more industrial subsidies (to prevent leakage) and support for carbon capture technologies over other mitigation strategies.
These findings advance the understanding of how national states mediate the tension between economic growth, environmental protection, and climate mitigation objectives over time, and how advisory bodies shape these outcomes through shifts in the composition and ideational leanings of their expert communities.
Potential Impact
The results of Justcarbon provide new tools for comparative policy analysis and contribute to the growing field of research on environmental governance. The comparative framework and empirical insights are expected to influence future research agendas in sociology, political science, and environmental studies, while offering policymakers and advisors a better understanding of how the organization and composition of advisory bodies correlate with national climate and environmental policy trajectories. Moreover, by broadening the traditional focus beyond economic expertise to include a more diverse range of expert communities, Justcarbon opens new avenues for analyzing the politics of expertise in the green transition.
Key Needs for Further Uptake
To maximize the impact of these results, several further research directions are identified:
• Cross-country comparative expansion: Applying the comparative framework to additional countries would allow for a broader understanding of environmental state development and advisory system variation across different political and administrative contexts.
• Deeper analysis of expert body types: Extending the focus beyond formal PPABs to include other expert institutions such as research institutes, technical agencies, and transnational expert networks could provide a fuller picture of how expertise shapes environmental and climate governance.
• Multi-level governance considerations: Integrating analysis of transnational bodies (e.g. European Union advisory frameworks, international climate governance bodies) would enable a more comprehensive understanding of how domestic and international advisory dynamics interact. In this study, EU policies mainly serve as contextual drivers and inputs into national policymaking processes.
No commercial exploitation or intellectual property issues have arisen from the project. The focus remains on academic field-building and informing future research and policy development efforts.
The project developed a novel comparative framework for analyzing environmental states and policy advisory systems by integrating sociological approaches to the environmental state with political science research on Policy Advisory Systems (PAS). This theoretical and methodological contribution provides a new basis for systematic, comparative analysis across countries and over time—an advancement over previous research that tended to focus on single-country case studies or sector-specific analyses.
Empirically, Justcarbon assembled a unique dataset covering three decades of environmental and climate advisory activities in Denmark and Norway, including metadata on Public Policy Advisory Bodies (PPABs), their membership compositions, and their outputs. This allowed for a detailed, comparative examination of the evolving relationship between environmental and developmental policy concerns within national advisory systems.
Key findings reveal that despite earlier assumptions of greater political independence in the Norwegian advisory system, the operational use of PPABs in Denmark and Norway shows significant similarities. In both countries, the representation of traditional stakeholders (interest groups and civil servants) in PPABs has declined over time, while academic experts and business leaders have become more prominent—particularly in Denmark. Within the academic fields represented, Norway shows persistent dominance of Economics and Law, while Denmark is characterized by stronger dominance of Economics alone, with notably little involvement of legal scholars. Which correlates with a stronger emphasis on legal policy instruments in advisory outputs.
The project also uncovered important periodizations in the historical development of environmental and climate states in both countries:
• In Denmark, a relatively robust environmental state in the 1990s was weakened in the early 2000s, with climate and developmental concerns dominating advisory structures for two decades. A partial resurgence of environmental concerns has been observed since 2022 through initiatives such as the green tax reform and the establishment of the Biodiversity Council. These transformations coinced with novel political reforms to integrate land-use reforms with carbon taxation of agriculture, anchored in a new ministry solely tasked with this objective.
• In Norway, the environmental state remained embattled, facing opposition from resource-focused sectors, yet achieved periods of institutional strengthening from 2008 onwards, integrating climate and environmental concerns. Nevertheless, the finance ministry has maintained significant influence over climate policy, resulting in later carbon tax increases, more industrial subsidies (to prevent leakage) and support for carbon capture technologies over other mitigation strategies.
These findings advance the understanding of how national states mediate the tension between economic growth, environmental protection, and climate mitigation objectives over time, and how advisory bodies shape these outcomes through shifts in the composition and ideational leanings of their expert communities.
Potential Impact
The results of Justcarbon provide new tools for comparative policy analysis and contribute to the growing field of research on environmental governance. The comparative framework and empirical insights are expected to influence future research agendas in sociology, political science, and environmental studies, while offering policymakers and advisors a better understanding of how the organization and composition of advisory bodies correlate with national climate and environmental policy trajectories. Moreover, by broadening the traditional focus beyond economic expertise to include a more diverse range of expert communities, Justcarbon opens new avenues for analyzing the politics of expertise in the green transition.
Key Needs for Further Uptake
To maximize the impact of these results, several further research directions are identified:
• Cross-country comparative expansion: Applying the comparative framework to additional countries would allow for a broader understanding of environmental state development and advisory system variation across different political and administrative contexts.
• Deeper analysis of expert body types: Extending the focus beyond formal PPABs to include other expert institutions such as research institutes, technical agencies, and transnational expert networks could provide a fuller picture of how expertise shapes environmental and climate governance.
• Multi-level governance considerations: Integrating analysis of transnational bodies (e.g. European Union advisory frameworks, international climate governance bodies) would enable a more comprehensive understanding of how domestic and international advisory dynamics interact. In this study, EU policies mainly serve as contextual drivers and inputs into national policymaking processes.
No commercial exploitation or intellectual property issues have arisen from the project. The focus remains on academic field-building and informing future research and policy development efforts.