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An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions
Abstract
Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies.
The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.
... The imperative to align societal development with planetary boundaries demands transformative sustainability transitions through long-term, multidimensional restructuring processes [1,2]. Early work in this field centered around four core analytical concepts: the socio-technical multilevel model, strategic niche management, the technological innovation systems approach, and transition management [1][2][3]. They established foundational approaches in transition studies, largely focused on technological interventions in production-consumption systems (e.g., [4][5][6]), emphasizing systemic processes at a macro level [1,3]. ...
... Early work in this field centered around four core analytical concepts: the socio-technical multilevel model, strategic niche management, the technological innovation systems approach, and transition management [1][2][3]. They established foundational approaches in transition studies, largely focused on technological interventions in production-consumption systems (e.g., [4][5][6]), emphasizing systemic processes at a macro level [1,3]. As evidenced by systematic reviews, subsequent interventions and methodologies that have evolved from these approaches mainly focus on the creation of transformative knowledge through innovation and technology research (e.g., [2,4,5]). ...
... As discussions evolved, the initial limitations of the sustainability transition field [1]notably its focus on energy issues [3]-have been mitigated by expanding research topics, scopes, approaches, and methodologies. For instance, studies addressing the field's social diversity and complexity now span perspectives [7][8][9], normative orientations [10][11][12], values and ethics [13][14][15][16], actor strategies and resources [17,18], and digitalization [19,20]. ...
This paper introduces the Transition Intervention Point System (TIP-System), a Taoist-inspired theoretical framework aimed at supporting sustainability transitions by integrating multidimensional sustainability research by leveraging point theory. The TIP-System consists of 21 Transition Intervention Points (TIPs), each defined by the intersection of five sustainability dimensions (ecological, social, economic, cultural, and inner) with distinct intervention levels (deep and shallow). The TIP-System endeavors to bridge qualitative and quantitative approaches by drawing on cross-cultural insights. It integrates deep interventions—Taoist-inspired meta-coordination, core values, and spiritual-ethical leverage points—with shallow interventions and technical transition pathways, underpinned by continuous adaptive feedback and systemic interdependencies. Preliminary empirical evidence from eight social innovation initiatives and an ongoing EU-funded rural transition project in Southern Europe suggests that the dynamic interplay among the 21 TIPs may facilitate the identification of transition states and support targeted sustainability change. However, the conceptual complexity of the TIP-System also indicates the need for further refinement to improve its practical accessibility. Future research should aim to develop more user-friendly evaluation tools and assess the framework’s performance across diverse contexts. Overall, the TIP-System provides a promising foundation for guiding transformative change across diverse contexts. Although further empirical validation is warranted, the framework’s novel perspective enriches both theoretical inquiry on and the practical application of sustainability transitions.
... This transition involves complex socio-technical changes that require a comprehensive understanding of the underlying processes and dynamics [6]. Indeed, relevant empirical issues stem from unsustainable consumption and production patterns across socio-technical systems (ST-systems) [7], such as energy, housing, transportation, and food ST-systems [8,9]. These issues cannot be addressed only through small incremental changes or technocratic solutions, as they demand fundamental shifts toward sustainable ST-systems [1,10]. ...
... In this research domain, scholars adopt several theoretical frameworks and approaches, both system-oriented and consumer-oriented, to investigate energy transitions. However, on the one hand, systemic frameworks (e.g., Muli-Level Perspective, Technological Innovation System) often adopt a macro-level, top-down perspective that emphasises large-scale systemic changes and institutional dynamics, overlooking the significant role that individuals, communities, and grassroots initiatives play in driving and shaping energy transitions from the bottom up [8]. On the other hand, consumer-oriented approaches, such as behavioural economics (e.g., nudge theory, ABC) and social practice theory, tend to focus on micro-level behaviours or routines. ...
... However, as consumers move from being passive recipients to active participants in energy systems, their role in reconfiguring supply structures and ST-systems becomes increasingly important [17]. Accordingly, addressing the integration of social practices, power relations and the agency of consumers together with STsystems' structures and configurations in shaping transition processes becomes fundamental [8,16,18]. An illustrative example is the adoption of photovoltaic panel technology, where the decision-making process is influenced not only by incentives and policies but also by supply chain structures, material culture surrounding home ownership, and established household consumption patterns, as well as the willingness to change and adapt these patterns to energy production ones. ...
Investigating the transition toward more sustainable socio-technical systems in the energy sector is challenging, requiring the integration of political economy and ecology perspectives, along with social power dynamics. Nevertheless, these elements are often studied in isolation, and not integrated into transition research theoretical frameworks, hampering the development of a more nuanced understanding of sustainable transition in the energy sector. This paper provides a systematic literature review and thematic analysis to provide a critical overview of the System of Provision (SoP) approach as a complementary theoretical approach for energy researchers. The SoP approach connects social practices, cultural norms, and consumer agency with broader economic structures, recognising energy consumption as an integral part of daily life rather than an isolated activity. Bridging micro-level behaviours with macro-level policies, the SoP offers a bottom-up framework to understand the roles of agents and systemic factors in sustainable energy transitions. The SoP approach paves the way for novel research inquiries into consumption behaviours and social relations, particularly those that encompass emergent modalities of practice, cognitive frameworks, and organisational structures in the provisioning of energy. The paper concludes by offering practical insights for applying the SoP approach in empirical studies, highlighting key elements like agents, structures, processes, relations and material cultures, outlining geographical contexts, provisioning systems, and methodological options for both detached and engaged research, and discussing the main critiques and weaknesses of the approach, offering alternatives to move forward research in the energy sector.
... Sustainability transitions are inherently political, as various individuals and groups may hold differing views on the preferred direction of change and the proper methods to navigate such shifts (Meadowcroft, 2011). Additionally, transitions have the potential to create both beneficiaries and those who may experience adverse effects (Köhler et al., 2019). Although earlier studies on sustainability transitions have been criticized for their neglect of power, the recent years saw an increasing recognition of the political dimension of sustainability transition (Köhler et al., 2019). ...
... Additionally, transitions have the potential to create both beneficiaries and those who may experience adverse effects (Köhler et al., 2019). Although earlier studies on sustainability transitions have been criticized for their neglect of power, the recent years saw an increasing recognition of the political dimension of sustainability transition (Köhler et al., 2019). For instance, Avelino et al. (2023) conducted an empirical analysis examining how various dimensions and relational forms of power -namely, power to, power over, and power with -manifest across multiple types of social innovations in energy (SIE). ...
... Another relevant strand of research within the field of the politics of sustainability transitions is the role of social movements, non-profit organizations, advocacy coalitions and civil society (Chilvers & Longhurst, 2016;Köhler et al., 2019). It has long been acknowledged that sustainable transitions can be slowed down or resisted by powerful incumbent regimes, or can be accelerated by grassroots coalitions (Avelino et al., 2016;Hess, 2014). ...
We unpack the politics of the budget process in the Philippines, from the viewpoint of an advocacy coalition, the Move As One Coalition (MAOC). We aim to understand and explain the discrepancy between the purported prioritization of the Public Utility Modernization Program (PUVMP) by the national government and the inadequate budget allocation it receives, compared to the substantially huge budgets earmarked for rail projects. Using a case study approach, we focus our in-depth analysis on the politics of the first two stages of the budget process-namely, budget preparation and authorization-since deliberation and actual decision-making are done in a significant manner in these phases. We show how the dominant politics in each phase, set by the budget-related institutional rules and furthered by rail lobby groups, leaves limited space for the advocacy coalition to shape and influence the process toward a more equitable budget allocation. Challenges notwithstanding, the coalition has created opportunities for civil society involvement and achieved significant wins. Our paper adds to existing research by directly connecting the budget politics with the topic of sustainability transition politics within the Global South context.
... Sustainability transitions research is motivated by the recognition that overcoming environmental problems, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and natural resource depletion requires fundamental changes in socio-technical systems for production and consumption (Köhler et al., 2019). The research area began to emerge during the 2000s as an effort to bring together different focusing on a comparison of their ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions (Section 3). ...
... They are characterized by complex multi-stakeholder interactions involving learning, conflicts, and power dynamics, reflecting a dynamic balance between stability and change, as such, they require social, cultural, and procedural innovations just as much as technical ones (Krlev and Terstriep, 2022). Socio-technical systems change is inherently long-term, subject to ongoing evolution, and marked by contested and uncertain development trajectories (Köhler et al., 2019). In sustainability assessment, the unit of analysis is often put on resource flows into and out of technical systems and how these effect ecological systems. ...
... Moreover, sustainability assessments may assist with identifying sources of unsustainability and improvement potentials in existing socio-technical systems to enable more targeted governance of such systems. Because transition governance of this kind is characterized by its multi-actor nature and normative ambitions (Köhler et al., 2019), these characteristics should be reflected in the manner with which sustainability assessments are performed. For example, it is important to ensure that sustainability assessments are embedded in normative, transparent, and transdisciplinary frameworks that reflect the plurality and contextual nature of sustainability (Troullaki et al., 2021) and that they seek to avoid power imbalances leading to the dominance of certain types of knowledge and actor groups (Minna et al., 2024). ...
This article explored opportunities and benefits of combining insights from sustainability assessment and sustainability transitions research. First, an overview of both research areas regarding their key ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions is presented. Second, an analysis of what benefits both areas may bring to the another was conducted. Finally, a synthesis was done based on recent literature in the cross-section between the two areas of research. The overview showed that there are fundamental differences between the two research areas, such as in how sustainability is conceptualized, regarding what knowledge is needed to achieve sustainability, and in the units and levels of analysis applied. Despite this, several ways in which interaction between the two areas and cross-pollination of results could be beneficial was shown. Finally, it is argued that a multidisciplinary approach-where theories and methods are combined sequentially or in parallel-is preferred from a practical perspective.
... This responsibility lies with several system actors: companies, regulators, activist groups, and customers. Consequently, a sustainability transition perspective (Köhler et al., 2019, Loorbach et al., 2017 on degrowth value creation could provide important insights into the di5erent stages, strategies, and leverage points involved in a degrowth transition. ...
... This highlights the paradox that degrowth-oriented value creation, which takes place in collaborative value chains, is usually international and hence does not favor full relocalization. Here again, we argue that a study of degrowth value creation in business cannot be undertaken without considering the larger context of transition, which reinforces our recommendation to study the principles of degrowth in business in light of transition theories (Köhler et al., 2019, Loorbach et al., 2017. ...
... Degrowth value creation in business implies that these businesses are in transition, and the priority and logic of the implementation of degrowth principles (e.g., circular business model first, or relocalization first) remain unclear. In other words, studying organizing for degrowth in business from a processual approach (Dawson, 1997;Hernes, 2014;Hjorth et al., 2015) and from a transition perspective (Köhler et al., 2019, Loorbach et al., 2017Vandeventer et al., 2019), focusing on understanding organizations as dynamic, evolving entities with ongoing activities and interactions in a certain context, would provide an additional and complementary understanding of degrowth value creation in business and shed light on the transitions that companies are experiencing. ...
Purpose: Overconsumption and overproduction in the fashion industry have detrimental impacts on the environment and society. A radical transition of the industry is required to eliminate the impact generated by years of exploiting the Earth’s finite resources while ignoring planetary boundaries. A degrowth transition entails an equitable downscaling of production and consumption in the Global North to increase human well-being and enhance environmental conditions. This article aims to generate an empirical understanding of conceptualizing degrowth in business models, with an emphasis on how value is created in the examined companies and to bridge the gap between two research fields: degrowth and business model innovation for strong sustainability. Design/Methodology/Approach: Our qualitative study investigates how 12 selected companies in the Dutch fashion industry conceptualize degrowth in their business models to create value. Findings: Our results reveal that profit distribution is de-emphasized and that prioritizing social, ecological, and economic value while promoting growth in size and revenue allows these companies to outperform unsustainable competition. Consequently, we found that the examined companies create degrowth value through quality growth. Value maintaining is achieved by reducing resource use and output within production, combined with designing for durability, repairability, and longevity in clothing. The examined companies also share value by collaborating in the exchange of physical resources, knowledge, and skills to facilitate a sustainability transition in the industry. In terms of value unlocking, the companies operationalize degrowth while operating as sustainability influencers and demonstrating transparency regarding the sustainability of their operations and products. Originality/Value: Our study contributes to a practical understanding of sustainable business models that support degrowth-oriented value creation in for-profit fashion companies. Conceptually, the findings highlight key degrowth principles employed by these businesses—such as leveraging sustainability influencers, maintaining transparency about the sustainability of operations and products, assuming responsibility for post-consumer product management, and ensuring fair value distribution. These principles are then linked to value functions that drive sustainable value creation. Finally, this study enriches the existing literature by offering empirical insights into how degrowth principles are implemented at the organizational level.
... For example, Scoones et al. 13 proposed an overview of different conceptualisations of transformation in three categories of structural, systemic, and enabling approaches. Kö hler et al. 19 provided a review of the sociotechnical transition field in relation to different areas (e.g., governance, civil society, ethical aspects). O'Brien 20 summarized the dynamics of societal change in relation to three interacting practical, political, and personal spheres of transformation. ...
... To address the fragmentation challenge, we propose a systemic and integrated approach to classifying and connecting different analytical lenses that work with various forms of scientific and societal knowledge (e.g., local knowledge, lived experience). This integration theoretically builds on foundational work by Scoones et al. 13 on approaches to transformation, Kö hler et al. 19 on review of the sociotechnical transitions field, and O'Brien 20 on interacting spheres of systemic change. It is also grounded in empirical insights drawn from our diverse set of 60 case studies examining real-world efforts in sustainability transitions and transformation. ...
... These entry points are supported by and aligned with germinal theoretical works on transition and transformation, including key reviews. 19,31 For example, and without being exhaustive, studies have discussed how transitions emerge through different maturation stages 5 to overcome incumbency (i.e., navigating resistance to change within existing systems that constrain transitions) and mainstream emerging innovation (i.e., various ways to scale up and spread innovation more widely to drive change). Similar terms were used in other areas of literature, for example, path dependency, lock-in, and resistance to refer to overcoming incumbency, 16,32 and social tipping points, technological innovations, and system leverage points in association with mainstreaming emerging innovation. ...
... The multi-level perspective (MLP) theories promote spatial integration in industrial symbiotic interaction between SSFs and LSIs, as well as within global production networks across geographically dispersed regions [14]. This approach strengthens the interconnections of emerging production networks and socio-economic roles, serving as transitional mechanisms toward sustainable development. ...
... This approach strengthens the interconnections of emerging production networks and socio-economic roles, serving as transitional mechanisms toward sustainable development. Furthermore, it explains that the technological innovation, based on a multi-tiered and inclusive approach, involves the industrial stakeholders and rural communities [14]. ...
... The IoT micro-factory enables citriculture societies to access the global market through the global production network (GPN) and to leverage comparative advantages in global markets [14]. The GPN facilitates a sustainable transition in production and influences societal consumption patterns by introducing new products in a specific context [28]. ...
Sustainable development initiatives are essential for enhancing the social economy and environmental preservation in marginalised rural areas of Tanzania. This study examines the impact of an IoT micro-factory on sustainable development, addressing issues such as inadequate production techniques, agribusiness monopolisation practices, the shortage of small-scale factories, and the failure to leverage global market comparative advantages. It explores the mediating role of architectural innovation and the moderating role of industrial symbiosis. The study surveyed 196 participants, including 100 orange farmers, 96 industrial engineers in the beverage sector, and conducted interviews with 3 industrial managers and 3 industrial consultants. SmartPLS 4 was used to evaluate the relationships between constructs. The results indicate that both IoT micro-factories and global production networks (GPNs) have a direct influence on sustainable social-economic development. Architectural innovation mediates these relationships, while industrial symbiotic moderates the interaction between IoT micro-factories and architectural innovation. The findings emphasise the importance of IoT micro-factories for sustainable development, with industrial symbiotic relationships addressing gaps in knowledge, skills, and equitable trade. The industrial stakeholders should prioritise IoT micro-factories as small-scale factories to promote sustainable development in rural communities of developing countries.
... The United Nations has warned that the magnitude of the required transitions requires "unprecedented systemic responses" [18]. Global sustainability issues, by their nature, are complex and interdependent, involving non-linear feedback loops, delayed effects, and long-term uncertainties [19][20][21][22]. As such, they demand more than just technological fixes or incremental policy changes; they call for profound transformations in the underlying values, worldviews, and institutional logics that govern human-environment interactions. ...
... Rooted in Taoist principles of flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness, this realm ensures that paradigmatic shifts manifest as actionable pathways that retain coherence with deeper transformations. Its relevance spans policy innovation [27], transition design [63], systemic experimentation [19], biomimicry [64], social innovation design [65], and lowcarbon infrastructure [66][67][68]. These interventions are most likely to achieve meaningful impact when anchored in the ethical momentum generated by the deep realm. ...
Addressing the escalating complexity of global sustainability challenges requires interventions that are not only technically effective but also cognitively and philosophically grounded. While the leverage points perspective has provided a useful framework for understanding systemic change, it can be enhanced through more operational coherence and cultural pluralism. This paper introduces the Deep and Shallow Sustainability Intervention (DSSI) framework, a novel conceptual model that integrates Taoist philosophical insights with contemporary systems thinking and the leverage points literature. Structured across five interconnected Taoist-inspired domains and ten leverage points, the framework extends and enriches Meadows’ leverage point theory by integrating pre-paradigmatic meta-cognitions, systemic momentum, and context-sensitive action. It emphasizes that sustainable transitions require the dynamic interplay between foundational source-code shifts and operational implementation. This framework contributes to the growing field of transformative sustainability science by (1) embedding non-Western epistemologies into systems transformation theory, (2) offering a structured yet flexible model for multi-level intervention design, and (3) enabling transdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, paradigmatic shift, meta-systemic logic, governance, and practice. Preliminary applications in European rural transition contexts suggest its potential to enhance context-sensitive action and value-aligned systems innovation. The DSSI framework thus offers a timely and integrative approach for guiding long-term, systemic, and culturally responsive sustainability transitions.
... Geels and Turnheim, 2022). The normative orientation of sociotechnical transition research calls for a clear policy directionality (Köhler et al., 2019). In an effort to account for the material basis (technological artefacts, infrastructures, etc.) of SIS in a better way, Geels (2004) drew on sociology and institutional theory. ...
... Its second contribution is an operationalisation of the analytical concept that allows for empirical investigation. Thirdly, the research question also represents a response to the agenda of transition studies: there is growing attention for actor agency in the course of sustainability transitions (Avelino, 2021;De Haan and Rotmans, 2018;Huttunen et al., 2021;Köhler et al., 2019;Sotarauta et al., 2021). Recent attention is directed at the variety of behavioural patterns exhibited by incumbents (Galvan et al., 2020;Magnusson and Werner, 2023;Turnheim and Sovacool, 2020). ...
This thesis explores the status and prospects of transition towards a bioeconomy. It asks how bioeconomy actors’ sociotechnical imaginaries, their perception of context conditions and their institutional work contribute to the current status of an emerging bioeconomy. Theoretical concepts from evolutionary economics (innovation systems; sociotechnical systems) and organisational sociology (neo-institutional theory) guided the empirical research. Main results show that transition is held back by insufficient societal deliberations and blurred objectives of bioeconomy promotion. The institutional conditions differ markedly in different industries: the impact on actors’ institutional work can be conducive, barricading or exhausting. Progress towards transition appears more likely where institutional logic change is combined with tightening regulation. Policy may strengthen field-level coordination mechanism and help SMEs advancing new quality management systems for a bioeconomy.
... Multiple actors catalyze SPIPs [58]. These actors have the knowledge, interests, preferences, resources, capacity, power, investment strategies, and power to make decisions while introducing and catalyzing innovations [36]. ...
... This has resulted in changing policies, such as tax exemptions for the pumps' users. However, these policies take years to implement before they affect and support the private sector engagement in IIB, which aligns with Köhler et al. [58] and Geels [36]. Smallholder farmers' IIB perceptions have changed due to the creation of awareness, promotion, and capacity-building activities. ...
... Transitioning from existing systems, such as diesel-based energy to MRE, requires dismantling current socio-technical regimes and developing new ones better suited to Blue Economy economic activity (Kivimaa & Kern, 2016). While the literature extensively explores the politics and power dynamics in sustainability transitions (Köhler et al., 2019), specific risks for SIDS governments in these transitions remain underexplored. In this context, using examples from MRE investments, we identify three types of risks. ...
... For instance, the transition to MRE could lead to government-owned utilities losing market share, facing sunk costs, and workers losing employment opportunities and community legitimacy. Simultaneously, project proponents and foreign investors may gain wealth, influence, and control over vital energy assets, which may be contested and require SIDS governments to expend significant political resources to resolve (Köhler et al., 2019). The risk for SIDS is that such investments may create new social inequalities, undermining long-term economic development objectives and principles of economic justice. ...
Commonwealth Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are broadly recognised as facing considerable challenges in accessing finance for development and climate change adaptation. Conventional approaches to overcome these challenges emphasise investing in capacity building to improve the quality of SIDS domestic governance as the key factor in facilitating more investment. We argue that this strategy has had limited success because it has failed to derisk SIDS specific systemic barriers faced by SIDS governments and investors. To address this, we introduce the Common Pool Asset Structuring Strategy (COMPASS) as a new type of financial governance framework and pathway for SIDS to access international finance and investment. Using the principle of collaboration, this model would shift SIDS from making individual applications for finance, to collectively developing investable projects, at larger scales, that can exploit common investment opportunities - thereby increasing scale, driving down project costs and diversifying project risk profiles.
... Entretanto, duas críticas têm surgido nos últimos anos em relação à PMN e que são basilares para este trabalho. Uma delas aponta para falta de atenção aos aspectos espaciais das transições, isto é, a negligência da especificidade dos lugares e a geografia das relações intraorganizacionais dos atores em geral (Kanger, 2022;Köhler et al., 2019). Em razão disso, geógrafos econômicos têm sugerido uma nova abordagem conhecida como geografia das transições de sustentabilidade (Binz et al., 2020;Hansen;Coenen, 2015;Truffer et al., 2015) que acrescenta a dimensão espacial aos estudos das transições. ...
... Assim, buscase, a partir de um corpo de discursos selecionados (dados qualitativos), estabelecer as relações sociais e econômicas de sujeitos e ideias por meio de métricas quantitativas. Além disso, tal metodologia vem enfrentar o problema da falta de consideração dos aspectos territoriais (espaços, escalas e lugares) nos estudos sobre transições (Köhler et al., 2019). Portanto, trata-se de metodologia recente e original que contribui significativamente para a compreensão das transições sociotécnicas, abordagem esta considerada a mais relevante entre o conjunto de teorias de mudança sociotécnica (Sovacool;Hess, 2017) . ...
(https://doi.org/10.18472/SustDeb.v16n1.2025.55626)
A transição para a sustentabilidade dos sistemas alimentares pode oferecer oportunidades para a inclusão produtiva em contextos de exclusão, sobretudo nas áreas rurais, e contribuir para o enfrentamento da crise climática. Este estudo tem o objetivo de compreender casos de inclusão produtiva e sustentável em meio rural e verificar o papel das políticas públicas. As experiências estudadas, em duas regiões do Nordeste brasileiro, caracterizam-se como nichos de inovação, ressaltando as soluções técnicas e sociais que conduzem à transição para sistemas sustentáveis e inclusivos. Mediante uma metodologia qualiquantitativa, procedeu-se à análise das configurações sociotécnicas (ACST) no âmbito dos estudos de transições e análise de redes. Os resultados mostram a importância das capacidades cognitivas e organizativas oriundas de agricultores familiares. Concluise que é necessário fortalecer as políticas que apoiem esses nichos emergentes, conforme o contexto territorial. Por fim, é fundamental mitigar os efeitos negativos das tecnologias ambientais externas, como a energia eólica, sobre as comunidades rurais.
Palavras-chave: Inclusão produtiva. Transições sociotécnicas. Regimes alimentares. Sistemas alimentares. Agroecologia.
... How a transition towards a bio-based construction sector occurs, and how niche biobased innovations diffuse and change the logics and institutions within the construction sector, can be studied through an innovation systems perspective, as outlined in the literature on innovation and sustainability transitions (Jacobsson and Bergek 2011;Köhler et al. 2019). This body of literature has shown that while novel bio-based innovations have started to diffuse, they often struggle to reach mass markets and gain legitimacy on a broader scale (L. ...
This paper explores the role of guanxi in facilitating innovation within the Chinese construction sector. Guanxi, denoting the network of trust-based relationships, is deeply rooted in Chinese culture and orchestrates innovation activities. As the construction sector shifts toward bio-based building materials, understanding how guanxi influences innovation activities becomes crucial for the sector's sustainability transition. Through qualitative research involving expert interviews, we examine how guanxi varies along the construction value chain, between bio-based and conventional materials, and among Chinese and foreign stakeholders. Our findings reveal that guanxi is particularly important in smaller firms and academic institutions, where personal relationships drive innovation collaborations. In contrast, larger organizations and international partnerships rely more on formal networks and expertise. In bio-based construction, guanxi plays a critical role in accessing resources and knowledge, fostering innovation through established personal networks.
... Die sozialwissenschaftliche Mobilitätsforschung sollte hier an die interdisziplinären Forschungen zu umfassenden Transformationsprozessen (Köhler et al. 2019) anschließen, die untersucht, unter welchen Bedingungen eine De-Institutionalisierung eines etablierten sozio-technischen Regimes wie der Automobilität möglich werden kann (Geels 2012). Der Begriff des "sozio-technischen Regimes" basiert dabei auf dem Mehrebenenmodell von Transformationen (MLP) (Geels 2002), das als eine Heuristik an der Schnittstelle von Technikgeschichte, Techniksoziologie und Innovationsforschung entwickelt wurde, um Veränderungsprozesse sozio-technischer Arrangements zu untersuchen. ...
Zusammenfassung
Moderne Gesellschaften sind bewegungsintensiv, die wirtschaftlichen Verteilungsspielräume werden durch eine systematische Absenkung des Widerstandes des Raumes realisiert. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Verkehrsinfrastruktur für den Personen- und Güterverkehr. Während in den Sektoren Industrie, Landwirtschaft und private Haushalte eine Reduktion der Treibhausgase auch unter den herrschenden Bedingungen durch den Einsatz von technischen Innovationen möglich wurde, ist dies beim Verkehr – abgesehen von den Effekten der Corona-Pandemie – bislang nicht gelungen. Die Sozialwissenschaften haben verpasst, die Bedeutung des Autos für die Gesellschaftsbildung und ihre ökonomische und soziale Stabilisierung ausreichend deutlich zu machen und stehen deshalb jetzt unter Zugzwang, normative Ansätze in der Klimapolitik ins Machbare zu übersetzen und die Frage zu beantworten, was innerhalb der bestehenden Grundordnung an Veränderungen basaler Funktionselemente überhaupt möglich ist. Bislang sind die Versuche einer „Verkehrswende“ noch nicht wirklich gelungen. Die entscheidenden Fragen, wo und unter welchen Umständen sich Reformen überhaupt realisieren lassen und welche Rolle dabei auch die Sozialwissenschaften selbst spielen, sind erst noch zu beantworten.
... Los debates críticos sobre la gobernanza de transiciones también han destacado la no incorporación de los estudios del poder, y han dado lugar a una variedad de estudios teóricos y empíricos sobre cómo concebir el poder, la política y los discursos en transiciones diversas (Avelino y Rotmans, 2009;Scoones et al., 2015;Patterson et al., 2017a;Köhler et al., 2019;Kok et al., 2021). Las transiciones, como procesos de cambio o transformación, tienen un componente profundamente político e implican en muchos casos cambios radicales de las estructuras, las prácticas y los modos de pensar (Meadowcroft, 2011;Avelino et al., 2016;Patterson et al., 2017b). ...
Transitamos no solo una crisis ecológica y una crisis de desigualdad, sino también una crisis de confianza en el gobierno, la política y la ciencia. Estas crisis plantean grandes desafíos a las sociedades actuales sobre cómo avanzar hacia una transición sostenible construyendo una sociedad más justa e igualitaria. Diversos ámbitos académicos, centros de análisis estratégicos y desarrollo y activistas políticos han argumentado en favor de transformar los modelos de gobernanza, el contrato social, las interacciones entre sociedad, economía y gobierno, fundados en nuevos valores e imaginarios que ayuden a transitar desde una sociedad de mercado hacia alternativas de mayor sostenibilidad, bienestar y equidad. Reflexionar sobre nuevos modelos de gobernanza es por lo tanto un desafío global, que en la región se enfoca en los procesos de transiciones sostenibles. En este artículo se exploran marcos conceptuales sobre la gobernanza ambiental y posibles interacciones virtuosas entre los diversos aportes y enfoques, a efectos de incorporar robustamente las dinámicas políticas en los procesos de cambio.
... Sociotechnical systems theory highlights the co-evolution of technology and society in shaping sustainable development outcomes [73]. Transition theory provides insights into how digital-ecological innovations can contribute to broader sustainability transitions [74]. ...
The rapid advancement of digital technologies has fundamentally transformed urban development patterns, creating unprecedented opportunities for ecological innovation and sustainable development. This study investigates the impact mechanisms of digital transformation on urban sustainable development through ecological innovation, using panel data from 96 Chinese cities spanning 2015-2023. We construct comprehensive indices for digital transformation, ecological innovation, and sustainable development using principal component analysis, and employ multiple regression models to examine their relationships. Our findings reveal that digital transformation significantly promotes ecological innovation (β=0.973,β=0.973, p<0.001,p<0.001), which in turn enhances urban sustainable development (β=0.921,β=0.921, p<0.001p<0.001). Mediation analysis demonstrates that ecological innovation serves as a crucial mediator, accounting for 87.4% of the total effect of digital transformation on sustainable development. The study also identifies significant regional heterogeneity, with stronger effects observed in eastern regions and larger cities. These results provide empirical evidence for the "digital-ecological-sustainable" development paradigm and offer important policy implications for promoting urban sustainability through digital-ecological synergy. The research contributes to the literature by integrating digital transformation theory, ecological modernization theory, and sustainable development theory into a unified analytical framework, while providing practical guidance for policymakers seeking to leverage digital technologies for environmental and sustainable development goals.
... Research suggests that trade unions should be considered as critical actors in sustainability debates (Barth and Littig 2021;Snell 2021;Thomas 2021a), yet they remain largely absent from major conceptual frameworks, such as the agenda of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network (Köhler et al. 2019). ...
... This expression indicates a peculiar type of sustainable sociotechnical transition (Markard et al, 2012) entailing 'a change in sources of energy supply, conversion, infrastructure, or energy use' (Sovacool et al, 2021, p 2), replacing carbon-intensive technologies and practices with low-carbon ones (Green and Gambhir, 2020). Thus, by definition, decarbonisation is an intentional process, heavily driven by policy choices and characterised by political conflicts between winners and losers (Köhler et al, 2019). A report by the Climate Action Network (2018) finds a high heterogeneity in EU countries' ambition and progress in reducing carbon emissions, with Sweden, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg ranking highest, while Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Ireland, Malta and Poland rank lowest. ...
... We do have very interesting projects ongoing, which we are aiming to pilot (Resp 27) Policy support; government regional initiatives; Supportive taxation and regulation Markard et al. 2012;2016 Bachus andVanswijgenhoven 2018;Kivimaa and Kern 2016 Local and regional factors; natural resource endowments Local technological and industrial specialization Hansen and Coenen 2015;Bridge et al. 2013;Carvalho et al. 2012Carvalho et al. 2012Monstadt 2007;Ornetzeder and Rohracher 2013 High levels of trust in local networks Maassen 2012;Bridge et al. 2013;Wirth et al. 2013;Gonzalez-Porras et al. 2021 Articulation of expectations and visions Rip and Kemp 1998;Geels and Raven 2006;Schot and Geels 2008 REGIME Social pressures, change norms Consumer demand Markard et al. 2020;Köhler et al. 2018Binz et al. 2012Dewald and Truffer 2012 Opportunity to change consumer culture Collective vision: collective urge to deal with issues Users as active players in socio-technological change Kern 2011;Kern andSmith 2008 Oudshoorn andPinch 2003;Hyysalo et al. 2017;Schot et al. 2016;von Hippel 2016 Interorganizational collaboration Metaorganizations supporting change Ahrne and Brunsson 2008;Berkowitz and Bor 2024;Bor and O'Shea 2022;Köhler et al. 2019;Lehtimäki et al. 2023 Associations as drivers NICHE Restructuring of markets, value-chain creation, regulatory and institutional changes Relationships within and between value chains Bergek et al. 2008;Bohnsack et al. 2016;Markard and Hoffmann 2016;Geels 2012 Garud andKarnøe 2003 Protected spaces, interactions between learning processes (on various dimensions) Kemp et al. 1998;Raven 2006 Geels andRaven 2006;O'Shea et al. 2021;Markard and Hoffmann 2016; Large companies and pilot collaboration 7 Discussion and Conclusions Table 1 illustrates how the findings of this study on barriers to a sustainability transition in food packaging reinforce key aspects of previous literature. However, while other scholars noted a lack of, or slow, policy support, this study finds that the food packaging transition in Finland is not concerned over a lack of policy support. ...
Sustainability transitions are long-term processes that may take decades to unfold. Historically, they have been viewed as mostly emergent processes unfolding without explicit or organized order through individuals or entrepreneurs exploiting commercial opportunities offered by a new technology. As these transitions are systemic changes, there are both barriers and enablers within the system affecting these changes. This chapter focuses on identifying barriers and enabling factors through a multilevel perspective lens. We identify barriers related to the landscape, regime actors, and niche actors on the organizational level and in concert with other niche or regime actors on the interorganizational level. We also investigate enabling factors, focusing on the sustainability transition in food packaging in Finland. We consider collaboration a key enabler among actors within the multilevel perspective framework and consider how different actors enhance the transition.
... Food packaging is a multi-industry activity (see also Fig. 1) requiring inputs from packaging material producers, packaging producers and food producers, and this means that the sustainability transition demands changes in both the materials and the food regime. Sustainability (sociotechnical) transitions are particularly uncertain and tend to take decades to unfold (Köhler et al. 2019). As they have various actors operating in different industrial sectors and multiple interdependent changes between these sectors, when studying cross-industry interaction and activities, the whole division between industry and niche actors becomes much more complex than when dealing with a single industry. ...
The chapter portrays the changing inter-industry dynamics of the sustainability transition in Finnish food packaging during 2019–2021. The transition is being driven by European and national regulation and consumer pressure. For the transition to successfully push forward, more needs to be known about how different industries are realigning to develop genuine systemic innovations, which enable the re-configuration of food packaging. We use the multilevel perspective (MLP) as a framework for sustainability transition and show how landscape pressures are driving radical changes in inter and intra industry relationships. The transition demands urgent responses, particularly by the food producing industry, which relies on innovation from another industry, that of food packaging material. Critical elements of the inter industry dynamic are the need for cross-industry collaboration, the urgency of one industry versus the risk aversion of the other and creating a common response to exogeneous pressures that have created intra-industry ruptures and inter-industry instabilities.
... This ignores that many researchers have demonstrated the relationship between society and technology working both ways (e.g., Markusson et al., 2012). This has been both theoretically and empirically argued in several schools of thought, such as science and technology studies (e.g., Pinch and Bijker, 1984) and sustainability transitions (Köhler et al., 2019), and in widely used conceptual frameworks, such as technological innovation systems (e.g. Bergek et al., 2008) and multi-dimensional feasibility assessments (Steg et al., 2022;IPCC et al., 2018). ...
Emission reductions needed to reach the Paris Agreement goals rely heavily on carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). However, CCS implementation is lagging due to complex interactions of societal and technological factors. Attempts to enhance CCS implementation focus primarily on lowering technological and economic barriers, assuming that societal support will develop if public awareness is increased. This, however, overlooks the interdependence between CCS public support, policy action and industrial implementation. Productive interaction between these factors requires mutual trust between stakeholders. Scaling up the technology will thus
require appreciating the mutual dependencies and nurturing trust. Genuine investments in public trust go beyond ‘educating the public’, supporting deliberative initiatives instead and allowing for real influence of relevant stakeholders. Our recommendations include designing inclusive engagement processes, safeguarding public participation rights, involving independent scientific expertise, supporting deliberative initiatives like citizen assemblies, and fostering transparency through community-led platforms to build trust in CCS implementation.
... The growth of this increasingly simplified agricultural system, dependent upon high amounts of external, energy-intensive inputs, has driven negative environmental a landscape scale for agricultural transformation, where niche innovation can be expanded to a region that shares macroeconomic patterns, political environments, and climatic conditions (Jung et al., 2024). Transitions are long-term processes that often take decades to unfold because radical innovations take a long time to develop from their emergence in small application niches to diffusion across a landscape (Köhler et al., 2019). In this case, radical innovations include continuous living cover systems that would transform the current dominance of maize/soybean monoculture systems and provide the environmental benefits increasingly needed by local and regional communities. ...
The United States (U.S.) Corn Belt leads North America in row crop production, yet this high productivity comes at an environmental cost in terms of nitrate loss, soil erosion, and greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, we focus on the Upper Mississippi River basin within the U.S. Corn Belt, which represents a landscape scale for agricultural transformation. We outline a methodology to assess a suite of environmental outcomes associated with the transition from summer annual maize/soybean systems to incorporation of continuous living cover systems. We use and expand publicly available tools alongside empirical data to assess nitrate loss, soil erosion, and greenhouse gas emissions for four potential agricultural transition scenarios in the region, on an annual basis compared to a business-as-usual maize/soybean rotation. We consider the following four scenarios: incorporating (1) winter annual cover crops or (2) winter annual oilseeds into 50% of maize and soybean hectares in the region, or converting 50% of marginally productive maize and soybean hectares to (3) agroforestry or (4) pastured livestock systems. Our results indicate that all four systems are likely to reduce topsoil loss when compared to maize and soybean systems, and that the more transformative systems—agroforestry and pastured livestock—have the greatest potential to reduce nitrate loss. Yet, our results suggest that among these transitions, there are tradeoffs in environmental outcomes. For example, pastured livestock and winter annual oilseeds could potentially increase greenhouse gas emissions relative to maize/soybean systems. Our results illustrate that continuous living cover could improve environmental outcomes in the Upper Midwest, but there is tremendous uncertainty and variability surrounding those outcomes.
... La GT mise sur la recherche, la cocréation, l'expérimentation et la mise en réseaux d'acteurs afin de piloter la transition d'un système sociotechnique vers des objectifs de DD (Boulanger, 2008;Köhler et al., 2019;Loorbach, 2009 (Boulanger, 2008;Kemp, 2010 ...
... La GT mise sur la recherche, la cocréation, l'expérimentation et la mise en réseaux d'acteurs afin de piloter la transition d'un système sociotechnique vers des objectifs de DD (Boulanger, 2008;Köhler et al., 2019;Loorbach, 2009 (Boulanger, 2008;Kemp, 2010 ...
Ce projet vise essentiellement à faire progresser les connaissances sur le concept d’innovation durable et à mieux comprendre les conditions favorables à son implantation. Les innovations durables peuvent être vues a priori comme des innovations qui contribuent au développement durable, mais le concept est jeune et le définir ne fait pas l’objet d’un consensus.
Le projet a consisté à faire une revue de littérature du concept. L’étude a permis d’en circonscrire les contours et de proposer une définition. Deux documents sont issus de ce travail : d’une part un livre blanc faisant le point sur les connaissances du domaine, et destiné à toute personne désireuse d’en apprendre davantage ; d’autre part des orientations qui proposent des actions à mettre en œuvre par différentes parties prenantes afin de favoriser l’essor des innovations durables au Québec. L’innovation durable apparaît comme un levier puissant pour contribuer à opérer une transition socio-écologique bénéfique pour le Québec. Il s’agit néanmoins d’une des pistes de solutions à envisager qui doit s’articuler au sein d’un courant de recherche et de pratique plus large en faveur du développement durable.
... The imperative to drive sustainability transitions and transformations is increasingly well-documented (Köhler et al., 2019). In this context, substantial progress has been made in recent years in introducing a plethora of approaches that aim to strategically address significant sustainability challenges such as resource scarcity, environmental pollution, plastic waste, and the climate emergency. ...
The urgency of sustainability transitions is widely recognised. Yet, prevailing frameworks are predominantly developed within Global North contexts, limiting their applicability to the diverse and often complex realities of the Global South. This special issue advances sustainable consumption and production research by critically examining context-specific and transformative approaches that challenge dominant assumptions. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the selected studies explore food citizenship in Brazil, circular economy business models, and ESG prioritisation in less affluent markets, highlighting the underpinning - and sometimes undermining - mechanisms that shape sustainability transitions in these regions. The findings emphasise the role of consumer mobilisation, informal economies, and corporate sustainability strategies in shaping new sustainability pathways. By advancing these discussions, this special issue challenges one-size-fits-all sustainability models and calls for research that bridges the gap between theory and practice, fostering sustainability frameworks that are locally relevant, behaviourally driven, and globally impactful.
... While there are multiple frameworks available that explain how sustainability transitions change in practice, Geels [9] well-known multi-level perspective explains change through the interactions between three levels: niche, regime and landscape. These processes of change can be gradual, continuous and disruptive [5], with analysis focusing on how shifts are supported or hindered and possible ways to accelerate transitions [6]. These involve diverse multi-actor dynamics, key active roles and questions of agency and governance within wider systems [3,7,8]. ...
The utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in educational institutions has the potential to enhance processes and improve outcomes. ICT plays a pivotal role in various pedagogic activities, including communication within the classroom, creation of study materials, lecture delivery, and assessment (Alenezi et al. 2023). In higher education, the use of multimedia resources, real-time interaction, and distance learning can enrich the learning experience. Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in India are integrating E-learning into their teaching methods, receiving positive feedback from students. This study delves into the scope and significance of implementing E-learning in higher education, highlighting the rapid growth of ICT usage for teaching and learning in HEIs. The research paper offers a comprehensive review of existing literature on E-learning, focusing on its application in higher education institutions. It examines the impact, importance, and challenges associated with E-learning adoption in higher education, providing valuable insights for business professionals.
Socio-technical transitions literature has so far engaged very little with the question of how international institutions could foster transitions. Conversely, international climate policy literature shows gaps in engaging with transformational change. To address these gaps, this article analyses the potential of the first Global Stocktake (GST) under the Paris Agreement to foster transitions. The article first develops a novel conceptual framework for how international institutions can promote transitions. On this basis, the article synthesises recommendations for the GST outcome from literature and the GST process and compares them with the actual outcome. The article finds that the GST sent important signals and fostered knowledge and learning on key aspects of low-emission transitions. However, it mostly focused on energy systems and failed to establish mechanisms and resources to promote actual implementation.
Sustainability transitions require extensive coordination work. Surprisingly, we know little about the actions of those driving them. Our research objective was to identify sustainability change agents and study their implementation work in the Australian water sector. Using key informant interviews, we sought to understand the efforts of change agents driving two sustainability transitions. Our key findings are that change agents: (1) Interpret their contexts; (2) Focus their energies; (3) Build trust among stakeholders; and (4) Share their visions of the future. As well as offering practitioner insights, this research lays the foundation for systematic studies of change agents and sustainable development.
Food packaging is essential in modern food systems, fulfilling functions such as preserving food, ensuring safety and facilitating logistics, yet it is also a significant environmental challenge. This introductory chapter examines the role of food packaging in the sustainability transition, focusing on its dual function as a solution and a problem. Key challenges include the environmental impacts of material use, the generation of waste and the growing demand for packaging driven by societal trends. While innovative solutions like bio-based and reusable materials are emerging, systemic challenges persist, including trade-offs between reducing material use and maintaining functionality. The chapter highlights the limitations of focusing solely on technological fixes or material substitution, emphasizing the need for systemic and interdisciplinary approaches. It explores the dynamics between key actors, including policymakers, industries, and consumers, and discusses the influence of shifting regulations, market innovations and cultural practices. By framing packaging as an integral part of the food system, this chapter calls for a holistic perspective that incorporates ecological, economic, social and cultural sustainability dimensions. It also underscores the importance of aligning sustainability goals across sectors to enable meaningful transformation in food packaging to be discussed further in the rest of the book chapters.
Co-creation is an emerging form of collaborative governance enabling multi-source knowledge integration to tackle societal challenges. Yet, conceptualisations of the role of knowledge in co-creation remain scarce. In search of lessons on this matter, this article conducts a literature review, producing the outline of a heuristic that captures how the alignment of knowledge conditions explains the co-creation of social innovations. The proposed heuristic challenges deterministic accounts of knowledge in co-creation as a mere input/resource by shedding light on its cognitive, performative, relational, and contextual dimensions. This approach suggests further exploring network structures of knowledge circulation, social innovation pathways, and knowledge practices in co-creation processes.
Sustainability transitions challenge established governance models, in terms of balancing short- and long-term objectives, adaptation and mitigation, local and global perspectives, and fostering innovation, while maintaining stability. Recent research calls for more knowledge on managing such trade-offs and tensions. We address this gap through a study on stormwater management, where current efforts to mainstream nature-based solutions (NBS) challenge existing governance systems. NBS are increasingly promoted to sustainably manage ecosystems. However, their governance, at the interface between social, technical, and ecological systems, comes with multiple challenges. The paper sheds new light on these challenges, based on interviews and workshops in two European case studies. The nature-based innovation system framework is applied, to assess system-level interactions influencing the uptake of NBS, and their governance implications. In line with recent studies on transition and transformative governance, we show that governance enabling NBS must provide increased coordination and collaboration across sectors and levels, inclusion of diverse stakeholders and knowledge systems, and new financing mechanisms. Furthermore, we highlight the need for flexibility and context-sensitivity. In the studied cases, place-based dynamics are influential, and self-organisation to address tensions and experiment with new instruments and business models is an important enabler.
Users are increasingly acknowledged as important actors fostering those fundamental socio-technical innovations needed to achieve a sustainable society. In the literature, users have so far been portrayed mostly to play a role in early phases of technology formation. However, more recently users have become important players in the upscaling of various innovations. With the advent of new social media, users may interact effortlessly across large distances, exchange knowledge and so increase their contribution to upscaling. We investigate the new potential of virtual user communities. Conceptually, we build on recent insights from socio-technical transition studies to identify different upscaling dimensions. We conduct an internet ethnography of a large virtual community that formed around the Electric Vehicle (EV). Based on these data, we present virtual community characteristics and core mechanisms of participation in upscaling. We find that the community plays an important and distinctive role in fostering electric vehicle use.
Intermediary actors have been proposed as key catalysts that speed up change towards more sustainable socio-technical systems. Research on this topic has gradually gained traction since 2009, but has been complicated by the inconsistency regarding what intermediaries are in the context of such transitions and which activities they focus on, or should focus on. We briefly elaborate on the conceptual foundations of the studies of intermediaries in transitions, and how intermediaries have been connected to different transition theories. This shows the divergence – and sometimes a lack – of conceptual foundations in this research. In terms of transitions theories, many studies connect to the multi-level perspective and strategic niche management, while intermediaries in technological innovation systems and transition management have been much less explored. We aim to bring more clarity to the topic of intermediaries in transitions by providing a definition of transition intermediaries and a typology of five intermediary types that is sensitive to the emergence, neutrality and goals of intermediary actors as well as their context and level of action. Some intermediaries are specifically set up to facilitate transitions, while others grow into the role during the process of socio-technical change. Based on the study, as an important consideration for future innovation governance, we argue that systemic and niche intermediaries are the most crucial forms of intermediary actors in transitions, but they need to be complemented by a full ecology of intermediaries, including regime-based transition intermediaries, process intermediaries and user intermediaries.
In this paper we introduce an area of activity that has flourished for decades in all corners of the globe, namely grassroots innovation for sustainable development. We also argue why innovation in general is a matter for democracy. Combining these two points, we explore how grassroots innovation can contribute to what we call innovation democracy, and help guide innovation so that it supports rather than hinders social justice and environmental resilience. Drawing upon qualitative case studies from empirical domains including energy, food, and manufacture, we suggest it does so in four related ways: 1. Processes of grassroots innovation can help in their own right to cultivate the more democratic practice of innovation more generally. 2. Grassroots innovations that result from these processes can support citizens and activities in ways that can contribute to practice of democracy. 3. Grassroots innovations can create particular empowering sociotechnical configurations that might otherwise be suppressed by interests around more mainstream innovation systems. 4. Grassroots innovations can help nurture general levels of social diversity that are important for the health of democracy in its widest political senses. The paper finishes with a few suggestions for how societies committed to innovation democracy can better support and benefit from grassroots activity, by working at changes in culture, infrastructure, training, investment, and openness. JEL codes: O31; O32; Q55
While the theory and practice of transition management has been articulated and tested in Europe, little work in this vein has been undertaken in illiberal democracies, where state institutions may be captured by commercial interests, clientelism may operate and democratic rights may be constrained. We argue that a combination of insights from transition management and transdisciplinary research offers a basis for developing local strategies by which informal institutions can nurture alternative energy policy visions and prescriptions, in order to exploit policy windows that periodically arise. We articulate a conceptual framework to underpin such strategies, which emphasises the role of academics or other knowledge brokers as policy entrepreneurs, helping to build knowledge and capabilities, create networks of social capital and establish alternative discourse coalitions. While our particular applied interest here is in arenas for the development of low carbon energy scenarios in Latin America, the framework is also intended to have wider applicability.
This article addresses two central—yet insufficiently explored—characteristics of some social movements: i.) abrupt and rapid social mobilizations leading to ii.) the construction of novel political processes and structures. The article takes a novel approach to these issues by combining social movement literature and the notion of free social spaces with transition studies, which focuses on large-scale socio-technical transitions. This theoretical integration highlights the co-evolution between free spaces and societal transitions, and it is based upon complexity-thinking, which is essential to deal with non-linear dynamics. A key insight is that to enable bottom-up societal transitions, radical social movements need to proactively develop solid alternatives to existing societal structures, to be ready once a window of opportunity opens. This theoretical approach is empirically illustrated using the APPO-movement in Mexico in 2006.
Article can be downloaded for free here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318300702
Understanding how policymaking processes can influence the rate and direction of socio-technical change towards sustainability is an important, yet underexplored research agenda in the field of sustainability transitions. Some studies have sought to explain how individual policy instruments can influence transitions, and the politics surrounding this process. We argue that such individual policy instruments can cause wider feedback mechanisms that influence not only their own future development, but also other instruments in the same area. Consequently, by extending the scope of analysis to that of a policy mix allows us to account for multiple policy effects on socio-technical change and resultant feedback mechanisms influencing the policy processes that underpin further policy mix change. This paper takes a first step in this regard by combining policy studies and innovation studies literatures to conceptualise the co-evolutionary dynamics of policy mixes and socio-technical systems. We focus on policy processes to help explain how policy mixes influence socio-technical change, and how changes in the socio-technical system also shape the evolution of the policy mix. To do so we draw on insights from the policy feedback literature, and propose a novel conceptual framework. The framework highlights that policy mixes aiming to foster sustainability transitions need to be designed to create incentives for beneficiaries to mobilise further support, while overcoming a number of prevailing challenges which may undermine political support over time. In the paper, we illustrate the framework using the example of the zero carbon homes policy mix in the UK. We conclude with deriving research and policy implications for analysing and designing dynamic policy mixes for sustainability transitions.
Citizen users play important roles in the acceleration phase of energy transitions, during which small-scale renewable energy technologies (S-RET) become taken up more widely. From users’ perspective, turning the early, and typically slow, proliferation into a more rapid and widespread diffusion requires not only the adoption of S-RET but also the adaptation, adjustment, intermediation and advocacy of S-RETs. These activities become necessary because S-RET face a variety of market, institutional, cultural and environmental conditions in different countries. New Internet-based energy communities have emerged and acted as key user-side transition intermediaries that catalyse these activities by qualifying market information, articulating demand and helping citizen users to reconfigure the standard technology to meet the specificities of different local contexts. In doing so, Internet communities foster an appreciatively critical discourse on technology. Such user intermediation is important in expanding the markets for S-RET beyond that of enthusiasts, environmentalists and other early adopters, to the early majority of adopters who demand more exposure, clearer information and less uncertainty about new technology options.
After the perceived failure of global approaches to tackling climate change, enthusiasm for local climate initiatives has blossomed world-wide, suggesting a more experimental approach to climate governance. Innovating Climate Governance: Moving Beyond Experiments looks critically at climate governance experimentation, focusing on how experimental outcomes become embedded in practices, rules and norms. Policy which encourages local action on climate change, rather than global burden-sharing, suggests a radically different approach to tackling climate issues. This book reflects on what climate governance experiments achieve, as well as what happens after and beyond these experiments. A bottom-up, polycentric approach is analyzed, exploring the outcomes of climate experiments and how they can have broader, transformative effects in society. Contributions offer a wide range of approaches and cover more than fifty empirical cases internationally, making this an ideal resource for academics and practitioners involved in studying, developing and evaluating climate governance.
Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/earth-and-environmental-science/environmental-policy-economics-and-law/innovating-climate-governance-moving-beyond-experiments#3gfmUyF3RPxuK6wG.99
The Paris Agreement of 2015 marks a formal shift in global climate change governance from an international legal regime that distributes state commitments to solve a collective action problem to a catalytic mechanism to promote and facilitate transformative pathways to decarbonization. It does so through a system of nationally determined contributions, monitoring and ratcheting up of commitments, and recognition that the practice of climate governance already involved an array of actors and institutions at multiple scales. In this article, we develop a framework that focuses on the politics of decarbonization to explore policy pathways and mechanisms that can disrupt carbon lock-in through these diverse, decentralized responses. It identifies political mechanisms—normalization, capacity building, and coalition building—that contribute to the scaling and entrenchment of discrete decarbonization initiatives within or across jurisdictions, markets, and practices. The role for subnational (municipal, state/provincial) climate governance experiments in this new context is especially profound. Drawing on such cases, we illustrate the framework, demonstrate its utility, and show how its political analysis can provide insight into the relationship between climate governance experiments and the formal global response as well as the broader challenge of decarbonization.
Climate targets call for novel policy measures to facilitate widespread adoption of low-carbon solutions and innovations. The literature on socio-technical systems argues that experimentation has a prominent role in enabling sustainability transition. Experiments represent ways of testing new ideas and methods across a wide range of policy fields. Governance experiments in particular can support accelerated diffusion of new solutions, because they integrate policy with innovations. Here, types of success factors in the implementation of governance experiments to mitigate climate change are examined. Statistical analysis of sustainability innovations in the 28 European Union countries indicates that the types of success factors in governance experiments differ from those of product and social experiments. Governance experimentation is more positioned within socio-technical regimes than in strategic niches. These results suggest that governance experiments may indeed provide new transition opportunities towards low-carbon societies.
Poverty, climate change and energy security demand awareness about the interlinkages between energy systems and social justice. Amidst these challenges, energy justice has emerged to conceptualize a world where all individuals, across all areas, have safe, affordable and sustainable energy that is, essentially, socially just. Simultaneously, new social and technological solutions to energy problems continually evolve, and interest in the concept of sociotechnical transitions has grown. However, an element often missing from such transitions frameworks is explicit engagement with energy justice frameworks. Despite the development of an embryonic set of literature around these themes, an obvious research gap has emerged: can energy justice and transitions frameworks be combined? This paper argues that they can. It does so through an exploration of the multi-level perspective on sociotechnical systems and an integration of energy justice at the model’s niche, regime and landscape level. It presents the argument that it is within the overarching process of sociotechnical change that issues of energy justice emerge. Here, inattention to social justice issues can cause injustices, whereas attention to them can provide a means to examine and potential resolve them.
In this paper, we aim to understand what ICT-related automobility experiments are initiated in the Netherlands, who is involved and what promises they make, in order to get a better understanding of the magnitude and direction of change. We show an example of how to study a large variety of experiments to understand the emergence of niches before predetermining these as analytical constructs. By analyzing 118 experiments, we can identify the emergence of two niches: an automated mobility niche and a mobility services niche. The automated niche is characterized by large involvement of incumbents and a strong technological orientation. The services niche focuses more on organizational innovations and involves many new entrants. The involvement of a third actor category, ‘mature entrants’, applies to both niches and concern those actors that fall more or less in-between the common ‘incumbent-new entrant’ dichotomy. In general, experiments in the automated niche seem to strengthen the dominant role of the car in the automobility system, while services niche experiments mainly portray an altered role of the car in an alternative mobility system. We conclude that we gained a better understanding of the experiments and emerging niches, but at this stage, developments can still head in different directions. Nevertheless, the involvement of mature entrants in both niches, we argue, can be an important indication that more substantial change is likely to occur.
Transition modelling is an emerging but growing niche within the broader field of sustainability transitions research. The objective of this paper is to explore the characteristics of this niche in relation to a range of existing modelling approaches and literatures with which it shares commonalities or from which it could draw. We distil a number of key aspects we think a transitions model should be able to address, from a broadly acknowledged, empirical list of transition characteristics. We review some of the main strands in modelling of socio-technological change with regards to their ability to address these characteristics. These are: Eco-innovation literatures (energy-economy models and Integrated Assessment Models), evolutionary economics, complex systems models, computational social science simulations using agent based models, system dynamics models and socio-ecological systems models. The modelling approaches reviewed can address many of the features that differentiate sustainability transitions from other socio-economic dynamics or innovations. The most problematic features are the representation of qualitatively different system states and of the normative aspects of change. The comparison provides transition researchers with a starting point for their choice of a modelling approach, whose characteristics should correspond to the characteristics of the research question they face. A promising line of research is to develop innovative models of co-evolution of behaviours and technologies towards sustainability, involving change in the structure of the societal and technical systems.
Sustainable innovation requires collaboration across organizational boundaries, hence in this research, we take a boundary-spanning perspective on the business model. This perspective focuses on how value is created and captured across organizational boundaries, by investigating the value transfers between the focal organization and the external network of business model actors. We analyze the business models of 64 innovative sustainable organizations from The Netherlands in terms of how environmental and social sustainability is manifested in the content, structure, and governance of their business models. We find that environmental sustainability is mainly represented in value creation content, whereas social sustainability is achieved by serving underprivileged user groups and mainly is reflected in value capture content. We observe that social sustainability in both for-profit and non-profit organizations is often achieved by having an imbalance in value exchanges that is compensated elsewhere in the business model. In terms of business model structure we show that sustainable organizations use the same underlying business model structures as can be found in conventional firms. All in all, we demonstrate that analyzing the environmental and social sustainability of organizations using the boundary-spanning perspective on business models provides complementary insights to the traditional component-based view of the business model.
Currently little is known about how institutional arrangements co-evolve with urban experimentation. This paper mobilizes neo-institutional literature and recent urban experimentation literature as a framework to explore how and why institutional arrangements differ across urban contexts. Empirically the paper focusses on smart city initiatives in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Ningbo. These three cities are frontrunners in adopting a comprehensive smart city agenda, but they do so in different ways. The paper examines regulative, normative and cognitive elements of institutional arrangements, explores how they shape experimentation, and reflects on their place-based specificities. The comparative analysis suggests that the focus of, and approach to, experimentation can be understood as resting in a (possibly unique) combination of strategic agency and dynamics at multiple spatial scales. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This paper conceptualizes power and empowerment in the context of sustainability transitions and transition governance. The field of transition studies has been critically interrogated for undermining the role of power, which has inspired various endeavours to theorize power and agency in transitions. This paper presents the POwer-IN-Transition framework (POINT), which is developed as a conceptual framework to analyse power and (dis)empowerment in transformative social change, integrating transition concepts and multiple power and empowerment theories. The first section introduces transitions studies and discusses its state-of-the-art regarding power. This is followed by a typology of power relations and different types of power (reinforcive, innovative, transformative). These notions are then used to reframe transition concepts, in particular the multi-level perspective, in terms of power dynamics. The critical challenges of (dis)empowerment and unintended power implications of discourses on and policies for ‘sustainability transitions’ are discussed. The paper concludes with a synthesis of the arguments and challenges for future research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
The article describes the field of sustainability transitions research, which emerged in the past two decades in the context of a growing scientific and public interest in large-scale societal transformation toward sustainability. We describe how different scientific approaches and methodological positions explore diverse types of transitions and provide the basis for multiple theories and models for governance of sustainability transitions. We distinguish three perspectives in studying transitions: socio-technical, socioinstitutional, and socio-ecological. Although the field as a whole is very heterogeneous, commonalities can be characterized in notions such as path dependencies, regimes, niches, experiments, and governance. These more generic concepts have been adopted within the analytical perspective of transitions, which has led three different types of approaches to dealing with agency in transitions: analytical, evaluative, and experimental. The field has by now produced a broad theoretical and empirical basis along with a variety of social transformation strategies and instruments, impacting disciplinary scientific fields as well as (policy) practice. In this article, we try to characterize the field by identifying its main perspectives, approaches and shared concepts, and its relevance to real-world sustainability problems and solutions. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources Volume 42 is October 17, 2017. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Prepublication proofs available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306312717709363. What theories or concepts are most useful at explaining socio technical change? How can - or cannot - these be integrated? To provide an answer, this study presents the results from 35 semi-structured research interviews with social science experts who also shared more than two hundred articles, reports and books on the topic of the acceptance, adoption, use, or diffusion of technology. This material led to the identification of 96 theories and conceptual approaches spanning 22 identified disciplines. The article begins by explaining its research terms and methods before honing in on a combination of fourteen theories deemed most relevant and useful by the material. These are: Sociotechnical Transitions, Social Practice Theory, Discourse Theory, Domestication Theory, Large Technical Systems, Social Construction of Technology, Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Actor-Network Theory, Social Justice Theory, Sociology of Expectations, Sustainable Development, Values Beliefs Norms Theory, Lifestyle Theory, and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. It then positions these theories in terms of two distinct typologies. Theories can be placed into five general categories of being centered on agency, structure, meaning, relations or norms. They can also be classified based on their assumptions and goals rooted in functionalism, interpretivism, humanism or conflict. The article lays out tips for research methodology before concluding with insights about technology itself, analytical processes associated with technology, and the framing and communication of results. An interdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual inventory has much to offer students, analysts and scholars wanting to study technological change and society.
This paper proposes a framework for the analysis of technological innovation processes in transnational contexts. By drawing on existing innovation system concepts and recent elaborations on the globalization of innovation, we develop a multi-scalar conceptualization of innovation systems. Two key mechanisms are introduced and elaborated: the generation of resources in multi-locational subsystems and the establishment of structural couplings among them in a global innovation system (GIS). Based on this conceptualization, we introduce a typology of four generic GIS configurations, building on the innovation mode and valuation system in different industry types. The analytical framework is illustrated with insights from four emerging clean-tech industries. We state that a comprehensive GIS perspective is instrumental for developing a more explanatory stance in the innovation system literature and developing policy interventions that reflect the increasing spatial complexity in the innovation process.
Incumbent socio-technical regimes based on fossil fuels probably cannot be destabilised to the extent necessary to achieve major reductions in carbon emissions without significant policy action. Policy actors, however, remain loyal to fossil fuels. Effective transitions to sustainability will therefore require the identification of political vulnerabilities in fossil fuel regimes. This article identifies one such vulnerability in the form of negative storylines. It describes the development of these storylines using the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions, as well as four dimensions of frame resonance developed in social movement theory. It then illustrates this phenomenon using an historical case study describing the development of negative storylines portraying the American railways as abusive monopolists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These storylines played an important role in destabilising the railways, particularly when they also faced pressures from road transport, as policymakers were unwilling to relax regulations on a regime whose key actors they believed could not be trusted. This article argues that this pattern is unlikely to be unique to this case, but is rather a common development in incumbent socio-technical regimes. This article concludes by considering some implications of these findings for the destabilisation of existing fossil fuel regimes.
Recent technological advances have enabled the emergence of novel platform business models based on digital marketplaces. Marketplaces like Airbnb or Uber offer platforms to connect previously
unmatched demand-side and supply-side participants through innovative forms of value creation, delivery and capture. While countless firms claim to offer the next 'Airbnb for X' or 'Uber for Y', we lack knowledge
about the defining characteristics of these business models. To close the gap, this paper provides a conceptually and empirically grounded taxonomy of marketplace business models. Applying a mixed methods approach, we first develop an integrative framework that integrates the value creation, delivery, and capture choices. Guided by the framework, the research systematically analyzes 100 randomly selected marketplaces with content analysis and binary coding. The gathered data is analyzed with cluster analysis techniques to develop a taxonomy for digital marketplace business models. The clustering process reveals six clearly
distinguishable types of digital marketplace business models and thus shows that there exists no one-size-fits-all approach to creating, delivering, and capturing value with digital marketplaces. We characterize these distinctive business model types by integrating the qualitative and quantitative insights to advance the understanding of platform business models.
This book examines research at the intersection of two literatures—social movement studies and science and technology studies—and it argues that it is now possible to develop a theoretical synthesis of core concepts. The diversification of social movement studies toward non-state targets and institutionalized repertoires of action coincides with the development of science and technology studies toward expertise and publics. As the two fields have diversified in topical focus, they have grown closer to each other, and the conditions now exist for synthesis. The book focuses on industrial transition movements, which are defined as mobilized counterpublics of activists, advocates, entrepreneurs, and other agents of change who seek fundamentally new approaches in the design of industrial technologies, products, and organizations. Often these movements focus on improving the health implications and sustainability of industrial processes and products. They reveal the problem of undone science, or areas of research that could serve a broad public interest but are systematically ignored topics of study. The book examines several main areas of common ground between the two research fields that are relevant to the study of industrial transition movements, public policy, and undone science: repression, information flow, and ignorance; the epistemic dimensions of the political opportunity structure; the material culture and design aspects of frames and meanings in collective action; the development of unique mobilizing structures associated with counterpublic knowledge; the problem of resistance from industrial regimes and the strategies for overcoming resistance; and historical perspectives on the increasing importance of industrial transition movements.
A founding assumption and aim of the sociotechnical approach to sustainability transitions was the need to develop frameworks to understand major systemic changes that would be required across the entire chain of production, distribution and consumption. However, most studies have so far focused on partial aspects of the entire chain, often a single, radical technology innovation. Therefore, since the founding ambition remains largely unrealized, the paper aims to contribute to transition scholarship by developing an approach for ‘whole-system’ analysis. As a second contribution, we argue that this broader unit of analysis calls for greater attention to the architecture of the system in terms of how constituent elements are linked to one another. To elaborate this point, we develop a reconfiguration approach, based on conceptual extensions to the multi-level perspective, analysing both techno-economic developments and socio-institutional developments. This approach draws attention to the multiplicity and interdependencies of change processes that constitute transitions, including incremental change, component substitution, symbiotic add-ons, knock-on effects and changes to the system architecture. A third contribution is to make an empirical whole-system analysis of the low-carbon reconfiguration of the UK electricity system between 1990 and 2016. This is important and timely, because it allows socio-technical transition approaches to ‘speak’ at the same empirical whole-system level that dominates current long-term, low-carbon (modelling) analysis and associated political and public debate. This consequently enables a demonstration of the added value of the whole-system reconfiguration approach. Our findings show that early reconfiguration of the UK electricity system was dominated by modular changes within the generation and consumption subsystems; and more recently, how these earlier changes have triggered a new focus on the whole system architecture, anticipating deeper changes to the linkages between the generation, network and consumption subsystems.
Today's rapid global urbanization highlights the need for long-term transformations of basic service sectors in developing cities in order to improve the livelihoods of the urban poor. Sustainability transitions frameworks have proven fruitful for addressing these sort of challenges. However, they have been at pains so far in accounting for the heterogeneity and complexities that typically characterize informal settlements in the Global South. We therefore propose a conceptual framework that extends the conventional analysis of socio-technical regimes by distinguishing the two levels of sectoral regime and service regime. Challenges for sustainability transitions may then be identified by missing alignments within and among the two regime levels. The framework is applied to the sanitation sector of Nairobi, Kenya, a city experiencing rapid population growth and a highly uneven provision of basic services. Drawing on a set of 152 in-depth interviews, observations, and five focus group discussions, the paper reconstructs the prevailing service regimes and shows how they suffer from misalignments and dysfunctionalities creating all sorts of problems at a sectoral level. We conclude that Nairobi's sanitation sector can best be characterized as representing a splintered regime. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the new conceptualization of socio-technical regimes suggests some new sustainable transition pathways and how this framework might also be instructive for transition challenges in cities of the Global North.
The analysis addresses two critical gaps in the literature on low-carbon mobility transitions: 1) scenarios of low-carbon mobility concentrate on technological substitution and have only a limited representation of niche-regime interactions and behavioural change, and 2) detailed qualitative analysis of socio-technical transitions dynamics have limited utility in developing future projections. It applies the Multi-Level Perspective on transitions, combining case studies of mobility niches in the Netherlands with simulations of transitions pathways using the MATISSE model, by applying the bridging approach proposed by Turnheim et al. (2015a). The iterative, combined qualitative case study and quantitative simulation approach develops transition pathways including both behavioural and technological change.
The results show that both technological substitution to low carbon cars or a reconfiguration pathway away from car ownership to mobility lifestyles based on new public transport or cycling and walking for local trips are possible. However, while there is empirical evidence for the initial stage of a technological substitution to battery electric vehicles, transitions away from car ownership as the dominant mobility lifestyle have to overcome an established regime and will require major changes in culture and behaviour as well as support for new priorities in the institutions of transport planning.
Most transition studies are historical in nature and fail to arrive at prospective conclusions about future potential. In this paper we develop a new prospective transition framework, which revolves around the interplay between business models and socio-technical contexts. By looking at the dynamics of increasing returns, industry structure and the role of institutions, we analyze the upscaling potential of innovative bike sharing business models as introduced in Dutch cities over the past ten years (two-way station-based, one-way station-based, one-way free floating, and peer-to-peer sharing). We find that station-based business models are well institutionalized but harder to scale up, while the recent one-way free-floating model has the greatest scaling potential if institutional adaptations and geo-fencing technologies are successfully implemented. Peer-to-peer sharing is likely to remain a niche with special purpose bikes.
In many places, the electricity sector is transitioning towards greater share of renewable energy technologies. In the initial phase of the transition, a primary concern for research and policy was to establish renewables as technically and economically viable options. Today, the situation is different: renewables are diffusing rapidly in many electricity grids, thereby generating major changes for existing technologies, organizations and infrastructures. In this new phase of the energy transition, we do not just witness an acceleration of earlier transition dynamics, but also qualitatively new phenomena. These include a complex interaction of multiple technologies, the decline of established business models and technologies, intensified economic and political struggles of key actors such as utility companies and industry associations, and major challenges for the overall functioning and performance of the electricity sector (for example, when integrating renewables). Drawing on a transition studies perspective, this paper compares the two phases and discusses implications for research and policymaking.
The growing urgency of environmental threats combined with the slow pace of sustainability transitions has turned attention towards a better understanding of regime destabilization. Focusing excessively on niche innovations could be incumbent regimes’ diversion and resistance strategy and could reinforce the ‘business as usual’ mindset instead of contributing to system-wide changes. Historical cases of system transition have most often been used to understand the dynamics of regime destabilization. However, these insights have limitations when the focus is on ongoing transitions. Moreover, it is argued that more attention should be paid to agency and actors. Herein, regime destabilization is understood through an internally structured selection environment, implying that agency is assumed not only in variation at the niche level but also in the selection processes: (1) the selection environment is shaped by active and strategic actors and actor networks; (2) the selection environment is shaped by diverse discursive framings; and (3) the selection environment is shaped by various actors beyond the regime and even beyond the system in question. The argument is empirically tested in the case of the Finnish food system by constructing prevailing storylines in the sustainability transition. Four contrasting but partially overlapping storylines and their associated actor networks are identified. The empirical case supports the view that actors across all levels aim to influence the selection environment's formulation with their framing of the problem and the strategic response. Thus, more attention must be paid to the content and diversity of different discursive framings in sustainability transitions.
The evolution of consumer ownership models for renewable energies is not a solely financial issue; it is a social justice one too. Energy transitions geared towards renewables are often promised with the “best in mind”—low carbon production, greater energy efficiency, greater awareness from consumers around their consumption habits, and in the case of this book, increasingly distributed ownership (Bergman and Eyre 2011; O’Rourke and Lollo 2015). Positioned as part of this transformational change, the implementation of consumer ownership schemes in general and that of a Consumer Stock Ownership Plan (CSOP) in particular could, in theory, increase the success and speed of these energy transitions by increasing the integration of low-income, hard-to-reach consumers, enabling participation and distribution at low-threshold levels, and avoiding energy efficiency rebound effects as we move towards energy prosumption (Lowitzsch, this volume; Ellsworth-Krebs and Reid 2016). In this context, (co-)ownership appears to be a positive motivator for more sustainable practices. What is more, this could occur not only in relation to what we classically consider to be “renewable technologies”, such as wind, solar, and wave, but also increasingly in relation to the smart technologies that will become part of consumer life (Sovacool et al. 2017a). Yet consumer ownership approaches are not entirely unproblematic or without danger. This brief synthesis chapter explains why from an energy justice perspective.
Developing theory for understanding social transformation is essential for environmental sustainability, yet mainstream accounts of collective action neglect the dynamics of daily life. Theories of practice have proved generative for the study of sustainable consumption but struggle to accommodate the roles of collective actors, strategic action and purposive collective projects in social change. In response, this paper develops a practice theoretical account of collective action pertinent to processes of large scale social change, with specific focus on transitions towards sustainability. We consider three ideal types of collective—bureaucratic organisations, groupings and latent networks—and, drawing on existing social theoretical resources that are ontologically compatible with a practice account, explore the kinds of practices and arrangements which compose them. Processes concerning strategy, bureaucracy, management, social worlds and collective identity are identified as important combinations of practices and arrangements. We suggest a key contribution of practice theory has been to identify a type of collective action we call dispersed collective activity, and we suggest how this type of activity may give rise to collectives. We conclude by suggesting further development for the realisation of the project's contribution to the analysis of sustainability transitions.
This paper addresses the question why socio-technical transitions follow similar trajectories in various parts of the world, even though the relevant material preconditions and institutional contexts vary greatly between different regions and countries. It takes a critical stance on the implicit methodological nationalism in transition studies' socio-technical regime concept and proposes an alternative 'global' regime perspective that embraces the increasingly multi-scalar actor networks and institutional rationalities, which influence transition dynamics beyond national or regional borders. By drawing on globalization theories from sociology and human geography, we show that socio-technical systems often develop institutional rationalities that are diffused via international networks and thus become influential in various places around the world. In so doing, we shed light on the multi-scalar interrelatedness of institutional structures and actors in socio-technical systems and elaborate on the implications for the conceptualization of transition dynamics. The paper illustrates this with the case study of an unsuccessful transition in the Chinese wastewater sector. Recent studies indicate that key decisions on wastewater infrastructure expansion were not only influenced by path-dependencies stemming from China's national context, but equally (or even more critically) by the dominant rationality of the water sector's global socio-technical regime. We conclude by discussing the contours of a new research agenda around the notion of global socio-technical regimes.
Novel technologies require the support of larger technological innovation systems (TIS). A key feature of innovation systems are system resources - collective structures such as common standards, support programs, shared expectations or testing facilities all actors can use. System resources emerge either uncoordinated or as a result of strategic action by 'system builders'. In this paper we explore the conditions of system building. Taking a strategy perspective, we analyze how system building depends on resource constellations at a certain point in time. Drawing from research in the field of stationary fuel cells in Germany, we identify three generic modes, of system building: a) the "single mode", in which a system builder uses its own organizational resources to create a system resource, b) the "partner mode", in which a system builder joins forces with partners in order to co-create system resources, and c) the "intermediary mode", in which a system builder collaborates with other actors to set up an intermediary organization, which then works towards the creation of system resources. We show that the modes were chosen depending on i) what resources were initially available and ii) how they were distributed in the innovation system. Our paper contributes to a more differentiated understanding of system building in the TIS literature and beyond.
The most prominent framework for studying socio-technical transitions to date is the multi-level perspective (MLP). While appreciated for its flexibility and usefulness for studying socio-technical transitions it has not been without its critics. In this paper we focus on the ontological foundations of the MLP and its (in)ability to explain transitions and how they come about. The purpose is to initiate development of an explanatory theory for socio-technical transitions, by carrying out an immanent critique of the ontological foundations of the MLP together with a methodological critique. We show that the ontological foundations of the MLP to a large extent inhibits explanatory capacity. The argument is fourfold: since structure and agency are understood as inseparable, (i) the causal influence of material properties are undervalued, and (ii) different degrees of structural constraint and freedom of actors are ignored. As a consequence (iii) transitions are reduced to shifts in the maturity and spread of socio-cognitive rules, without analysis of systemic change. Moreover, (iv) mechanisms are reduced to recurring patterns of events which cannot explain why some transitions fail while others succeed. To remedy these limitations we outline alternative critical realist foundations for transitions theory.
Finland aims to increase the share of renewable energy to over 50% of all energy consumption by 2030. Even more ambitious visions exist of a 100% renewable energy system by 2050. To spur the process, campaigns promoting renewable energy and a new association have been established, creating a new energy political advocacy coalition in Finland. This article studies the green-transition advocacy coalition’s formation in the field of Finnish energy policy. The article identifies coalition actors’ core beliefs, and analyzes the coalition’s impact on policy change. The coalition has certain values in common, but is nevertheless divided by different views. The green-transition coalition in Finland could potentially be an important change agent but its impact is weakened due to divergent views in relation to the actual energy transition.
Transition studies have made constructive efforts to attend more closely to the politics of sustainability transitions, with discourse emerging as an increasingly important means of interrogating these dynamics. Drawing on discourse perspectives, this study deploys the multi-dimensional discursive approach to explore framing struggles surrounding a climate change mitigation experience of international significance (the phase-out of coal-fired power in Ontario), revealing how ideas, interests, institutions, and infrastructure (the four I's of sustainable energy transitions) interact in constituting pathways to sustainability. This approach captures the way in which contending actors frame issues and technologies, modulating possibilities and shaping the sequences of choices that link current societal arrangements to future low-carbon states. The study elaborates how processes of negotiation among competing interests and priorities helped define the pathway to eliminate coal. It also suggests that regulatory measures may help to accelerate the pace of transitions and succeed where market approaches are politically untenable.
This paper puts forward a 'curatorial approach' to systems transitions, which is a novel, practical and transparent way to deal with participation in complex and conflictual contexts. We argue that the complexity of transitions cannot be adequately addressed through traditional analytical tools. Alternatively, we propose an approach that can engage with multiple ways of knowing and expression, sustaining and developing a sense of 'meaning' in the planning process. We situate this within a systems perspective that combines individual and structural actions for vision creation. This is explored in the case study of a large peri-urban asset in Rome.
This paper provides a survey of policy process theories and their usefulness in transitions research. Some research has already used such theories, but often in an ad hoc and relatively cursory way and with little attention to potential alternatives. However, it has been argued that transition scholars need to pay more attention to the politics of policy processes. We argue that a critical stocktaking of policy process theories is a prerequisite for future transition studies that more systematically respond to these challenges. Therefore, we review five prominent policy process theories and their applicability in transition studies. We point to two weaknesses of empirical applications of these approaches that are of particular relevance for transitions research: their focus on single instruments or policy packages, and their neglect of policy outcomes. We conclude by suggesting avenues for research on the linkages between policy processes, policy mixes, and socio-technical change.
The energy sector plays a significant role in reaching the ambitious climate policy target of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C. To this end, technological change has to be redirected and accelerated in the direction of zero-carbon solutions. Given the urgency and magnitude of the climate change challenge it has been argued that this calls for a policy mix which simultaneously supports low-carbon solutions and also deliberately drives the discontinuation of the established technological regime. Yet, the effect of such phase-out policies on the development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies has received little attention in empirical research so far. This paper addresses this gap by taking the case of the transition of the German electricity system towards renewable energies – the so-called Energiewende. Based on a survey of innovation activities of German manufacturers of renewable power generation technologies conducted in 2014 it explores the impact such destabilization policies – most prominently Germany’s nuclear phase-out policy – may have on technological change in renewable energies. By drawing on descriptive statistics and combining insights from earlier regression analyses we find evidence that Germany’s nuclear phase-out policy had a positive influence on manufacturers’ innovation expenditures for renewable energies and was seen as the by far most influential policy instrument for the further expansion of renewable energies in Germany. The insights resulting from our explorative analysis have important implications for the literature on policy mixes and sustainability transitions regarding the ‘flip sides’ to innovation and the crucial importance of destabilization policies for unleashing ‘destructive creation’. We close by discussing policy repercussions for ongoing debates on policies for accelerating the phase-out of coal to meet climate change targets.
According to sustainability transitions theories, innovation policies should create protective spaces ('niches') for promising new technologies. Moreover they should support a cumulative process of market formation and growth. Based on results from comparative case studies of two competing technological innovation systems for heavy transport (biogas and electrification), this paper argues that these recommendations are contradictory when technology alternatives with different degrees of maturity compete for the same niche. Should innovation policies open up the niche for the promising but immature alternative, or should they continue to support the technology that already has attained a niche position? If this contradiction remains unsolved, there is a risk for conflicts that block the progress of both alternatives. The paper suggests that there is a need for differentiated policies to resolve the contraction. In order to facilitate further development of both systems, the paper suggests that niche nurturing for immature systems needs to be combined with redeployment into new market segments for more mature systems.
Sustainability transitions literature is a rapidly growing and influential field of research. It argues for a radical change of systems providing human needs. Being triggered by the negative implications of the Western post-war model of development, major transition frameworks such as multilevel perspective, strategic niche management or transition management have been widely used to clarify and motivate socio-technical transformations in mainly more economically developed world. Because of their sustainability appeal, however, transition perspectives began to be applied in developing countries. This paper takes stock of and systematises the theoretical insights from this application. Using systematic review method of 115 publications released in the last decade, the paper discusses novel methodological and conceptual lessons around: experimentation and upscaling; stability, change and power; regime uniformity; contextual forces; path-dependence; transnational linkages; normative orientation and other aspects. Although the identified insights confirm the middle range character of the transition theory, they force some reflexivity and raise new research questions for both contexts. The paper also identifies a few policy implication for international organisations, donors, governments and civil society organisations.
Grassroots innovations (GIs) diffuse by three pathways: replication, up-scaling, and translation. To date, a small body of research illustrates that niche-to-regime translation occurs under conditions of intermediacy: when a niche shares some, but not all, properties of a regime it prefigures. There has been less focus on the dynamics of niche replication and up-scaling, and the conditions that encourage these diffusion pathways. Drawing from interviews with the founders of cohousing initiatives in the United States, this paper offers in-depth accounts of replication and up-scaling, revealing how niche leaders and local project founders have positioned their projects as meaningful and practical to individuals with economic and social commitments to the mainstream. These results emphasize the interpretive nature of the diffusion of GIs while also problematizing the concept of intermediacy. A more nuanced understanding of these niche diffusion pathways will inform subsequent research on GIs, including additional subcategories of replication and up-scaling.
Fig. 1. Development of the Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) of the Big-4 utilities, in million euros.
The transition to circular economy has been heralded as a vision to overcome the challenges of rapid population growth, economic stagnation and environmental degradation. A promising policy tool for accelerating such a transition is strategic niche management (SNM), the central tenet of which is the formation of ‘protected spaces’ to support the growth of sustainable innovation. Studies have demonstrated that current top–down policy approaches to governing protected spaces have led to the unintended consequences of network tensions, low quality learning processes and low innovation adoption rates outside protected spaces. This limits the impact of SNM as a transition tool. Through a detailed literature review, this article looks into a novel devolved governance framework for protected spaces in the context of transition to circular economy. The framework addresses current limitations of SNM by acknowledging the synergistic relationship with the triple helix innovation system; and innovation intermediation. Transition to circular economy turns on the achievement of ‘triple helix consensus’ across ‘protected spaces’ to provide the requisite platform for sustained innovation and for the recurrent choice of knowledge and market systems that are consistent with the circular economy growth trajectory.
Energy markets are in a state of considerable transformation. As a result of new smart energy technologies, novel services can now be offered to customers. The adoption of innovations is often conceptualized in terms of technology diffusion, the success or failure of the new technology depending on how it is able to move across a market. It is taken as given that novel technologies diffuse from innovators to the mass market – a transfer in which non-use is thought to disappear over time. The article challenges the received approach to non-use, building on a typology by Satchell and Dourish, who suggest that non-use is more than lagging adoption: it can also manifest as active resistance, disenchantment, disenfranchisement, disinterest and displacement. The article draws on a survey carried out in Finland in 2013. We proceed from examining the non-adoption of smart energy services to analysing the attitudes linked to the many types of non-use. Thereafter, we will consider forms of non-use that are closely linked to assets and housing. We find that in the case of smart energy services the most important dimensions of non-use are disinterest and disenchantment, alongside lagging adoption. Moreover, disenfranchisement also has a role in explaining non-use.
Technological innovation, often induced by national and subnational policies, can be a key driver of
global climate and energy policy ambition and action. A better understanding of the technology–politics
feedback link can help to further increase ambitions.
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