Perceptions of competing agendas in carbon neutrality policies in Portugal ; Adverse impacts on vulnerable population groups

Funding Information: Joao Pedro Gouveia, Rita Lopes and Katherine Mahoney acknowledge and are thankful for the support provided to CENSE by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the strategic project UIDB/04085/2020. Katherine's work has also been supported by FCT through the scholarship SFRH/BD/147925/2019. Siddharth Sareen acknowledges and is thankful for the support provided by the Funder Research Council of Norway (Norges Forskningsråd), Grant number 314022 ASSET (Accountable Solar Energy TransitionS). We also extend a warm thanks to all of the interviewees for their time and valuable inputs into this research. Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors ; The links between the political agendas of climate change, the energy transition, and energy poverty are multiple, complex, and overlapping. In line with European Union policy demands, Member States are implementing the various policies necessary to address these agendas, with an emergent focus on their synergistic potential. Successful implementation requires cooperation between multiple actors, yet little research exists on how diverse actors view the agendas. This limits the ability to account for diverse perspectives in carbon neutrality policy and related insights on trade-offs and competition points between the climate change, energy transition, and energy poverty agendas. We analyse perspectives on agenda interactions based on 39 expert interviews on Portuguese carbon neutrality agendas. Our case study results suggest strong agreement regarding theoretical linkages of the agendas but mixed views on whether this transpires in practice. These perceived inconsistencies reveal several unresolved competing agendas in Portuguese carbon neutrality policies. We also reveal important influences on citizen agency in the decarbonisation agendas. We argue these insights are valuable for current policy approaches, which promote decarbonisation policies that incorporate energy poverty and rely strongly on citizen participation. ...