Driving Climate Breakdown: The barriers to decarbonising the automobile sector in the UK and Germany

Transport is the only sector in the global economy for which emissions continue to rise, with
automobiles contributing substantially to this increase. Electric vehicles (EVs) have emerged
as a key part of the strategy to address automobile emissions, becoming a central feature of
the Paris Agreement. The transition to EVs and the barriers to decarbonising the automobile
sector remain underexplored in the literature. To address this gap, I focus on the UK and
Germany to examine the unique characteristics of their EV transitions, and how they
compare. I develop a novel, synergistic theoretical framework that draws upon the Multi-
level Perspective (MLP) from the Socio-Technical Transitions literature and Ecological
Modernisation, to establish a robust theoretical framework in which to situate EV
transitions. By combining these approaches, I reconceptualise the MLP by continuing its
recent political turn. The work is underpinned by an original qualitative dataset of 65 semi-
structured interviews and extensive primary and secondary documentary analysis. I argue
that decarbonising the automobile sector requires a break from the orthodox neoliberal
capitalist logic that has defined the state's role and capacity in the contemporary political economic paradigm since the 1980s. I show that the UK is attempting to couple the EV transition with a modernisation of its economy and industrial capacity. In contrast, I find
that Germany, which is typically portrayed in the literature as a coordinated polity, has
become markedly uncoordinated during the EV transition. Overall, the thesis contributes a
detailed analysis of EV transitions in two national contexts, highlighting the political and
economic tension that has been created by states pursuing environmental objectives whilst
also attending to the economic interests of automobile manufacturers. The thesis identifies
key barriers to decarbonising the automobile sector and suggests ways in which those
barriers may be addressed.