Rene Kemp

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Maastricht University

In the search for solutions to complex challenges posed by climate change and sustainability transitions, organizations often turn to innovative approaches and new cognitive frames. Particularly in the public sector, however, entrenched institutional logics often impede progress toward novel solutions. This paper explores how a public organization...

This chapter traces the dynamic history of energy citizenship in the Netherlands, an evolution from grassroots protests to partnerships with businesses and government entities. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical events, case studies, and policy developments, the study shows how energy citizenship in the Netherlands has evolved from oppo...

Energy citizenship is viewed as playing an essential role in the transition towards sustainable energy systems on a national and global scale. However, as a social science concept it is rather fuzzy and insufficiently elaborated. This paper proposes a conceptual typology of energy citizenship that aims for a balance between various competing unders...

This paper aims at enabling the acceleration of CE transitions by offering insights into processes that need to take place to mainstream (or scale from niches to regimes) entrepreneurial solutions in two contexts, i.e., developed versus emerging markets and developing economies. Entrepreneurs play a crucial role in spurring innovation. The emergenc...

Existing transitions literature often highlights successful experiments for changing practices through multi-actor processes but overlooks the challenges of adjusting incumbent practices and engaging actors in reflexive learning. The current article addresses this gap through two qualitative case studies of water-related co-creation processes in th...

The EnergyPROSPECTS project conducted an online survey involving over 10,000 European citizens. The main objective of the survey was to collect information about opinions, expectations and doubts of European citizens regarding the preferred forms of their involvement in the energy transition. The survey was conducted in nine countries participatin...

This policy brief addresses the involvement of European citizens in the transition to a circular economy (CE), with a focus on the Meuse-Rhine Euregion. Despite substantial citizen engagement in renewable energy, participation in CE initiatives is limited, except in areas like the EU fashion resale market. Key barriers include technical challenges...

This report forms the concluding synthesis of WP2. Based on external feedback, conceptual advances and the empirical insights developed in WP3, WP4 and WP5, the deliverable provides empirically informed and conceptually refined insights into ‘active’ energy citizenship, the associated broader range of citizenship, and the relevant empowerment proce...

The report identifies the most viable business models, social innovation models and new forms of organisation appropriate for advancing energy citizenship (ENCI) in different conditions. It offers an innovative approach based on business and social innovation models (BSIMs) of the ENCI detailed case studies for the elaboration of strategies for ups...

In this paper, we argue that the development, uptake and adoption of innovations resembles an evolutionary process of variation, selection and retention (within broader processes of co-evolution) in which actors are myopically caught. We do so in four steps. First, we review in what ways socio-technical evolution resembles biological evolution. Sec...

The transformative agency of social innovation actors Description of D4.4: This deliverable contains workshop-based findings about strategies and capacities for enhancing the transformative agency of energy citizenship initiatives. Lead party for deliverable: University of Maastricht (UM) Document type: Report Due date of deliverable:

This encyclopedia entry deals with the role of social innovation in the remaking of social structures, socio-technical systems and regimes. The networked nature of social innovation and transformative goals of initiatives such as Slow Food and REScoop gives them a social movement element. Some are reformist, others are more transformative, but such...

This paper delves into the dynamics of responsibility in sustainability transitions. It positions these dynamics within the interplay between state and non-state actors, who jointly shape and allocate responsibility for collective action. Specifically, our focus is on collaborative governance arrangements, exemplified by initiatives like Green Deal...

The Transformation Flower Approach (TFA) introduced in this paper attends to multiple value creation and institutional change as a dual design challenge. By integrating social scientific theories and models relevant for transformative change (in particular focusing on pathways, leverage points, governance, power, and values) and practical insights...

This deliverable examines the role of intermediaries in enabling and promoting energy citizenship. Intermediations and intermediaries represent a central part of the emerging ‘new’ forms of governance aimed at accelerating the energy transition. D4.1 elaborates on the role of intermediaries in helping to achieve the goals/objectives of energy citiz...

China and Europe have both announced plans to be carbon neutral by 2060 and 2050 respectively. In residential sector, energy-saving technologies and behaviours are important measures to achieve carbon neutrality. This study investigated the adoption of technical and behavioural energy-saving measures in Northern China and Western Europe as importan...

The paper sets out to enrich the emerging debate on ‘deep’, transversal transitions. It does so by drawing attention to socio-economic developments neglected in the Deep Transition (DT) framework of Kanger and Schot, such as marketization, labour contracts becoming more individual and precarious, and changing human beliefs, aspirations, needs and w...

The annual renovation rate of the existing housing stock must increase rapidly to reach climate neutrality by 2050. This transition will require major investments but will also need to be affordable for everyone. Affordability is especially relevant for vulnerable and low-income households, many of which live in social housing in the Netherlands. P...

The importance of social and institutional innovations in the energy transition has become increasingly evident in recent years. The quest for new institutional arrangements and social relations has been accompanied by the proliferation of new concepts: Energy democracy, energy justice, energy poverty and energy literacy are interrogating and openi...

Non-technical summary A wide variety of social innovations exist today that offer urgently needed pathways for transforming societal systems into more just, sustainable and regenerative ways of organising human existence on this planet. However, a more systematic and practically useful understanding is needed of how individuals and organisations ca...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic offers an opportunity for dealing with persistent problems, through a transformative recovery process. It is a crisis that offers opportunities for dealing with three interrelated crises: the ecological crisis (climate change, loss of biodiversity, resource depletion, pollution and ecosystem destruct...

The corona (COVID-19) pandemic offers an opportunity for dealing with persistent problems, through a transformative recovery process. It is a crisis that offers opportunities for dealing with three interrelated crises: the ecological crisis (climate change, loss of biodiversity, resource depletion, pollution and ecosystem destruction), the confiden...

Total CO2 emissions from the cement industry approximately correspond to 8% of the global CO2 emissions. In this chapter, we compare and contrast the co-evolutionary trajectories of eco-cement technology and policy in the Netherlands, China and Japan. We reveal that the transition processes away from Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) to eco-cement fol...

Purpose: How does a small business engage in boundary work to innovate its business model towards sustainability? We employ a boundary work lens to trace the endeavors of a small company to explore, negotiate and (re)align organizational boundaries in its multi-stakeholder network around new, sustainable value propositions. Design/Methodology/Appro...

This deliverable describes the conceptual framework on energy citizenship. It lays down the key definitions, theoretical underpinnings and social constructions of the required systematic energy citizenship understanding. The conceptual framework discloses the diversity of more and less 'active' energy citizenship forms, identifying the main distinc...

This deliverable elaborates the fundamentals of the conceptual framework (D 2.1) into a conceptual typology of energy citizenship (ENCI). Following a robust methodology, ten ideal-types are presented and discussed in this document. This innovative conceptual typology captures the breadth of energy citizenship in terms of conceptual forms, thus enco...

This booklet (in Dutch) provides a synthesis of more than 15 research projects on urban sustainability transitions in the areas of energy, climate adaptation and circularity. These projects were funded by the Dutch national research program SURF (Smart Urban Regions of the Future). From the synthesis, six key insights are derived for policy makers...

Drainage-base agriculture and forestry are key drivers of emissions from degraded peatlands. An important challenge of climate-oriented peatland management is an improved conservation of their huge carbon stocks. Paludiculture, the productive use of wet peatlands, is a promising land use alternative that reduces greenhouse gas emissions substantial...

This deliverable elaborates the fundamentals of the conceptual framework (D 2.1) into a conceptual typology of energy citizenship (ENCI). This document provides a background report on the process of grouping the key conceptual distinctions of ENCI into empirical observable analytical categories. Following a robust methodology, ten ideal-types are p...

This deliverable describes the conceptual framework on energy citizenship. It lays down the key definitions, theoretical underpinnings and social constructions of the required systematic energy citizenship understanding. The conceptual framework discloses the diversity of more and less 'active' energy citizenship forms, identifying the main distinc...

The implementation of residential photovoltaics must increase more rapidly to combat climate change and its impacts. This challenge is addressed in this study by introducing a segmentation model in order to develop a theoretical and empirical foundation for understanding the heterogeneity of potential adopters. Data were collected by means of a sur...

This chapter analyzes the potential role of science, technology, and innovation (STI) in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), and what governments in developing countries can do to phase in STI-based solutions, especially green energy technologies, for achieving SDGs. For this purpose, the authors examined three successful phase-in exper...

In 2015, the United Nations General assembly adopted a set of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), including goals to further reduce poverty, hunger and inequality and to improve education, health, cities, economic wellbeing, environmental conditions and access to water and energy. Science, technology and innovation (STI) will play critical rol...

This paper responds to the need in innovation research for conceptual clarity and solid theory on social innovation (SI). The paper conceptualizes SI as changing social relations, involving new ways of doing, knowing, framing and organizing, and theorizes transformative social innovation (TSI) as the process of SI challenging, altering, or replacin...

This article empirically applies, tests, and refines a conceptual framework that articulates three dimensions of transformative impact and transformative capacity: depth, width, and length. This responds to the need for a more precise conceptual language to describe these terms and operationalize them in a way that is useful for practitioners in so...

This paper brings out some remarkable differences between China as a developing country experiencing high economic growth and the Netherlands as a developed country by examining the driving forces behind the evolution of residential energy consumption per capita (RECpc) in the two countries in the period from 2001 to 2015. The components we analyse...

In China, energy use from passenger vehicles is increasing rapidly due to urbanization and income growth, but the contributions of transport service structure shift and energy efficiency improvement, especially future energy-saving directions are controversial and unclear because of the differences in the choices of traffic modes, which may greatly...

Significant differences in the adoption of energy-saving measures between homeowners and renters were found in the survey data of 1,248 households from the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. In this study, we examined the influence of split incentive effects between homeowners and renters, which stem from differences between those who pay and those...

Social innovation (SI) is gaining attention as an innovation category. However, the SI concept proves vulnerable to stereotypical understandings. Next to the radically novel, diffusion-oriented and thereby manifestly innovative social ‘niches’, it is important to also acknowledge the rather latent SI phenomena of restoration and shielding. This pape...

This paper discusses the need for societal innovation as a systemic form of innovation for sustainable development. Sustainable development requires collective action from stakeholders in the form of system building activities, which in its turn requires societal innovation. Through societal innovation, based on multiple value creation, external co...

This paper evaluates how policy shaped the emergence of electric mobility in three countries, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark, between 2010 and 2015. Whereas previous studies have looked at the effects of separate policy instruments, this paper gives insights in the interaction effects of instruments on the diffusion of battery electric cars be...

The Maastricht Manual on Measuring Eco-innovation offers guidance on the measurement of eco-innovation in order to provide high quality data for research and policies to support the green economy. The Maastricht Manual has been designed for researchers, policy makers and statisticians from National Statistical Offices (NSOs) and other organisation...

In recent years, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made considerable steps forward in the measurement of firm innovation. However, no broad cross-country initiative has been undertaken to measure the state of green innovation (GI) in the region and the dynamics at stake. This document contributes to address this gap by drawing up a...

This paper published at Wirtschaftspolitische Blätter, written by experts of eco-innovation, offers guidance on the measurement of eco-innovation for a green economy. This is done through definitions, an explanation of important issues for understanding, a dis- cussion of the various ways in which eco-innovation (in its different forms) can be meas...

In practice, environmental policy is only moving slowly from a focus on promoting environmental technologies to a focus on greening socio-technical systems. Policy measures to stimulate resource efficiency (RE) typically address the national, sectoral, or company level. This article shows how an analysis addressing practices that citizens engage in...

The pace at which energy renovations are made to the existing housing stock must increase if the Netherlands is to reach the energy goals outlined in the nation's climate mitigation policy. In this paper, this challenge is addressed by introducing a novel integrative model for a private homeowner's decision-making process con- cerning energy renova...

This article responds to increasing public and academic discourses on social innovation, which often rest on the assumption that social innovation can drive societal change and empower actors to deal with societal challenges and a retreating welfare state. In order to scrutinise this assumption, this article proposes a set of concepts to study the...

Learning processes play a crucial role in the development of the transformative capacity of social innovation actors. This article builds on the recently developed Transformative Social Innovation (TSI) theory to propose a conceptual framework and research agenda for understanding and investigating the roles and limits of network leadership in supp...

Repair of mobile phones fits with the vision of a circular economy in an urban context and with the Sustainable Development Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. Drawing on the literature about firm level competitiveness and closed-loop design through repair, remanufacturing or recycling, we analyze the business ecosystem of independent mobil...

Dijk, M., da Schio, N., Diethart, M., Höflehner, T., Wlasak, P., Castri, R., Cellina, F., Boussauw, K., Cassiers, T., Chemin, L., Cörvers, R., de Kraker, J., Kemp, R., van Heur, B. (2019). How to anticipate constraints on upscaling inclusive Living Lab experiments, SmarterLabs project 2016-2019, JPI Urban Europe. https://smarterlabs.uni-graz.at/de/...

In this chapter we analyze patterns in the nature of eco-innovation research. For this, we conducted different types of bibliometric analyses on Web of Science Core Collection data. The analysis reveals that eco-innovation is examined from different perspectives. These are (1) supply-side perspectives focusing on firms and industries (e.g. drivers...

https://doi.org/10.21256/zhaw-1370

he SINCERE project (SINo-european Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency) is addressing the following priority themes under the Green Economy area: - The greenness and dynamics of economies; - Metrics and indicators for a green economy; - Policies planning, and institutions (including business) for a green economy - Green economy in cities and me...

In this think piece I discuss the humanisation of the economy through social innovation. I argue that partly in response to marketization and partly to other reasons an alternative economy is emerging: more local, ecologically minded with an important role for cooperation and purposeful activities which caters to basic psychological needs for auton...

In this article, we analyse the evolution of circular economy (CE) scientific knowledge in the most productive political geographies in the field, namely the European Union (EU) 28 and China by using bibliometric, network and survey analysis. Our objective is to provide a systemic, quantitative, visio-temporal review of the evolution of the CE scie...

'Perspectives on transitions to sustainability' presents a variety of analytical perspectives on systemic change, exploring what insights they collectively offer for policy, governance and knowledge creation. The report includes five academic papers drafted by internationally recognised experts in the field of sustainability transitions. For each o...

This paper argues that there is currently a need for new theory on transformative social innovation that is able to provide empowering insights to practice, especially in terms of how social innovation interacts with transformative change processes. It identifies three ‘pitfalls’ that such theory-building needs to confront, and presents middle-rang...

This editorial introduces the special feature on the role of game-changers, broadly conceptualized as macro-trends that change the “rules of the game,” in processes of transformative social innovation. First, the key concepts are introduced together with the academic workshop that brought together 25 scholars, from across a wide range of discipline...

An updated version of this working paper has been published in the 'Research Policy' journal (2020). Pel, B., Haxeltine, A., Avelino, F., Dumitru, A., Kemp, R., Bauler, T., Kunze, I., Dorland, J., Wittmayer, W. & Jørgensen, M. S. (2020), Towards a theory of Transformative Social Innovation: a relational framework and 12 propositions, Research Pol...

In this study, we investigate the driving forces behind the changes in residential energy consumption (REC) in China's urban and rural areas over the 2001-2012 period. Based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index method, the REC changes are decomposed into seven driving forces, which are climate change, energy price, energy expenditure mix, energy c...

In this article, we scrutinize the innovation trajectory of eco-cement in the Netherlands by examining the innovation nexus of eco-cement manufacturers, scientists/researchers, waste producers and policymakers as part of a broader analysis of markets, policy and society, with special attention to standards and regulations. The influence of policy a...

This 4th TRANSIT brief, authored by Adina Dumitru, Isabel Lema-Blanco and colleagues, offers insights into the following questions: what is social learning, what does it consist of in the case of SI initiatives, and why is social learning important – even foundational – for SI initiatives as well as wider society? Because social innovation initiat...

This deliverable is the synthesis report of work package 5 ‘Cases and Evidence – Meta analysis’. It presents the results of the meta-analysis of TSI propositions through the Critical Turning Points database. This database contains 65 local manifestations of transnational social innovation networks in 28 different countries, and almost 400 in-depth...

The idea of a circular economy (CE) has become prominent in both European and Chinese policy making. Chinese and European perspectives on a CE share a common conceptual basis and exhibit many similar concerns in seeking to enhance resource efficiency. Yet they also differ, and this article explores differences in the focus of CE policy in China and...

This TRANSIT brief offers insights into the following questions: what is social learning, what does it consist of in the case of SI initiatives, and why is social learning important – even foundational – for SI initiatives as well as wider society? The brief also, brief provides insight into the role of networks in social learning for social innova...

This paper outlines possibilities for a green industrial policy with particular emphasis on developing countries. The question of green industrial policy is investigated by examining experiences and barriers to phasing-in green technologies, focusing on solar PV and energy efficiency as areas for a green industrial policy. The paper outlines a gree...

This paper assesses the role of urban experiments for local planning processes through a case-based analysis of the city lab of Maastricht. In conjunction with this, the article offers three contributions, as additional elements. Firstly, the paper develops a set of defining characteristics of city labs as an analytical concept which is relevant fo...

The energy-related CO2 emissions in China have increased dramatically from 3384 to 8333 × 106 t during the last decade. To interpret these drastic changes, we undertake a structural decomposition analysis to decompose the changes in CO2 emissions from 1997 to 2010 into the following six driving forces: emission coefficient, energy intensity, Leonti...

Continuing economic turbulence has fuelled debates about social and political reform as much as it has stimulated actions and initiatives aimed at a more fundamental transition of dominant economic systems. This paper takes a transition perspective to explore, from a Western European viewpoint, how the economic crisis is actually viewed through a v...

This is a working paper from the early stages of the TRANSIT project. More recent accounts are Avelino, F., Wittmayer, J. M., Pel, B., Weaver, P., Dumitru, A., Haxeltine, A., ... & O'Riordan, T. (2019). Transformative social innovation and (dis) empowerment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 145, 195-206. Pel, B., Haxeltine, A., Aveli...

This paper offers an evidence-based narrative of the process of eco-restructuring of the Ruhr district in Germany in the 1970-2012 period in the form of a cleaning up of a polluted district, the creation of an eco-industry and a shift towards renewable energy in a coal and steel industry dominated economy. The authors conceptualise this process of...

Improvements in resource efficiency often underperform because of rebound effects. Calculations of the size of rebound effects are subject to various types of bias, among which methodological choices have received particular attention. Modellers have primarily focused on choices related to changes in demand, however, choices related to modeling the...

In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi introduced the concept of a double movement in society. The first movement is towards marketization: the spread of market thinking and market-based forms of allocation throughout society, driven by international trade and naturalist ideas of competition and utilitarianism. The second movemen...

In the paper of this presentation, we argue that Polanyi’s two-movement model is best reformulated as a three-movement model of i) marketization, 2) state-based social protection and 3) the humanization of the economy. The third movement is a countermovement to the first movement and to some elements of the second movement. Like its two cousins, th...

The rising imbalance between increased demand for minerals and their tighter supply has resulted in growing concerns about their criticality. This has in turn stimulated both resource-rich and resource-poor countries to take an active role in implementing mineral strategies. The present paper explains why different world regions responded different...

Policy makers and environmental agencies have echoed concerns brought forward by academics about the need to address the rebound effect for achieving absolute energy and environmental decoupling. However, such concerns have generally not been translated into tangible policy action. The reasons behind this inaction are not fully understood, and much...

Determinants of environmental regulation have been identified in different studies. The present paper takes the analysis of environmental policy determinants one step further by also studying the interaction effects between the determinants. In this article we seek to disentangle the causal structure behind environmental regulations with the help o...

Sustainability has multiple dimensions. This chapter wants to stress that there is an inherent element of subjectivity in sustainable development that needs to be acknowledged even when sustainable development is at heart about improved states of the environment. Understanding of objectivity, subjectivity, and development can serve a more fruitful...

The prevailing assumption among consumers in the North is that buying certified coffee contributes positively to the economic performance of Southern actors, particularly smallholder farmers. In this paper we examine the impact of coffee certification on the economic performance of Indonesian actors (farmers, traders, exporters, and Indonesian roas...

This chapter illustrates that broadening the analysis of practices to characteristics on the part of practice-carriers, as well as to systemic factors, bears improved understanding of reasons for practice variability and opens up practice research to more quantitative methodological approaches. Reminiscent of Reckwitz’s (2002) frequently cited defi...

This study investigates the uptake of energy efficiency (EE) measures in two important agro-industrial sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, the cassava- and maize-processing industries in Nigeria and Kenya. These two countries represent regions with a weak environmental policy regime and rather weak innovation systems. An empirical investigation of probl...

The term eco-innovation has been coined to label those innovations expected to reduce the life cycle environmental burdens resulting from their use. Claims of environmental superiority are usually supported by technology-oriented analyses, such as product-level life cycle assessment. However, the environmental superiority of an innovation depends n...