Title: New Strategies for Global Governance: Sustainable Energy-Related Global Policy Networks

Abstract: Energy spurs social and economic development and has multiple effects on the ecological and social environment of societies. Energy access for socially equitable development, energy security for sustainable economic growth, and the mitigation of climate change all represent issues of long-term developments, whose effects are not fully reflected in considerations of actors maximizing short-term profits in energy markets. Consequently, this paper will distinguish six forms of market failures in energy markets impeding the sustainability of social, environmental and economic development. International governance mechanisms are supposed to overcome those long-term problems. At the same time governance mechanisms must allow to consider short-term interests of various actors in order to incentivize and enable these actors to comply. Strategies for long-term policies, therefore, have to build in flexibility in governance mechanisms and include actors from the private sector and civil society as well. The Johannesburg World Summit 2002 produced a number of partnerships between state and non-state actors committed to sustainable development. Based on research on five sustainable energy-related global policy networks and conducted expert interviews, this paper will analyze the effectiveness of policy networks and aim to identify political, organizational, and economic instruments of effective global environmental governance. Hence, the paper will draft a strategy ho