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Economics does not come in only one version. In order to understand the emergence of carbon markets, this paper turns to the offices of politics and administration and argues that carbon markets ought to be seen as an effect of different versions of economics. Hence, the paper suggests that, in analysing and exploring the emergence of carbon markets, it is not sufficient to focus on market devices. We must study a wider set of devices, such as modelling practices, planning documents, and paper trails. The basis for this analysis is a study of a particular office, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. The paper traces how, within this office, the climate issue was transformed into an oil issue and how accounting and planning technologies took part in enacting the macroeconomy, rather than the environment, as an endangered object. Hence, when studying the performativity of economics, the macroeconomy must be included, the paper argues, and so must the study of the issue that is being enacted. In pursuing the analysis in this way, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the emergence of carbon markets pertained to not only an emergent climate issue but also to an emergent oil issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Putting climate neutrality on the urban agenda inevitably requires a re-imagination and delineation of the boundaries of the city, both at the geographical level, with regard to its inscription in history and concerning the social groups it is composed of. Such an exercise of (re-)imagination or representation is a profoundly political act. It is on the level of this symbolic representation that the (de)politicised nature of sustainability projects must be assessed. Leuven Klimaatneutraal 2030 (LKN2030), a project which aims to make the city of Leuven (Belgium) carbon neutral by 2030, is a case in point. The way it delineates its spatial boundaries, inscribes itself in time and conceives of the main actors representing the city generates profound forms of depoliticisation. Our contention is that these can explain some of the obstacles the project currently faces, whereas it initially triggered a lot of enthusiasm. Though mechanisms of in- and exclusion and agenda-setting inevitably take place in every sustainability project, in LKN2030 these choices tend to be neutralised behind a technical, managerial and scientific discourse. As a result, the project risks to translate potentially interesting dynamics into a consensual project for urban renewal and city marketing, whereby sustainability goals are reframed into marketing objectives and economic opportunities. Drawing on post-foundational political theory, this paper assesses this evolution, but also explores the potential forms of repoliticisation that are emerging in its wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]