Governance Institutions for a Polycentric and Technologically Complex Electric Power Grid

Abstract: What do good governance systems look like for the electric power grid? We know from prior work that governance systems can affect outcomes on the power grid (influencing cost, sustainability and reliability), and we know that “good” governance systems will be highly adaptive in ways that encourage innovation to support goals like reliability and resilience; low environmental and climate footprint; and affordability and access. The motivating question is a big and thorny one. The working group we are coordinating is designed to gather an interdisciplinary group of experts who will examine the challenges to governance institutions in this setting from perspectives informed by complexity science and analyses of evolutionary dynamics. In particular, we are interested in analyzing grid governance taking into account concepts like institutional fitness with changing landscape, and how layered nonlinear systems can result in non-deterministic outcomes.
 
The framing questions (to which we will apply complexity/evolutionary lenses) are: 
·    Institutional frameworks and theory: What are foundational concepts for sound governance in the presence of dynamic technological change? 
·    Institutional functions: What problems do we ask polycentric governance systems to solve for a complex system like the power grid?
·    Institutional fitness: What governance choices/structures are well-suited to achieving our broader set of goals and performing governance functions well? What does good governance look like?
·    Institutional performance: How do governance choices affect power grid outcomes? 
·    Institutional context: How do legal, economic and even cultural frameworks broaden or restrict the kinds of governance choices that can be made?
·    Institutional participation: In a polycentric governance framework, how do we determine which kinds of stakeholders have standing to participate?