Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions最新文献

Hydrogen is experiencing a resurgence in energy transition debates. Before representing a solution, however, the existing hydrogen economy is still a climate change headache: over 99 % of production depends on fossil fuels, oil refining accounts for 42 % of demand, and its transportation is intertwined with fossil infrastructure, like natural gas pipelines. This article investigates the path-dependent dynamics shaping the hydrogen economy and its interconnections with the oil and gas industry. It draws on the global production networks (GPN) approach and political economy research to provide a comprehensive review of current and prospective end-uses of hydrogen, modes of transport, networks of industrial actors and state strategies, along the major production facilities and holders of intellectual property rights. The results presented in this article suggest that the superimposition of private agendas may jeopardise the viability of future energy systems and requires counterbalancing forces to override the negative consequences of path-dependent energy transitions.

The literature on urban sustainability transitions has grown substantially over the last two decades. Recent debates have sought to position urban transition as an incremental process of reconfiguration informed by novel relationships between existing systems of provision and new infrastructural and governing arrangements. We extend these debates by exploring how digital platformisation of urban infrastructure is challenging the organisation and governance of existing urban systems. Bringing together literature on urban transitions with platform urbanism, we focus empirically on the rapid expansion of multiple digital mobility platforms in urban contexts. We ask: in what ways are multiple digital mobility platforms reconfiguring urban public transport systems and who is in control of this process? The paper makes two contributions. First, by deepening understanding of urban transition as multiple processes of reconfiguration. Second, contributing to debates on the governance of urban infrastructure transformation and who is shaping urban system reconfiguration and what implications this has for the control of urban public transport systems.

Radical innovations aiming for sustainability usually need to transform existing institutions in order to become successful. From a transition perspective, institutional work is one of the actors’ core activities in order to influence the dominant regime. This paper explores how institutional work materialises in an emerging bioeconomy. Our conceptual model shows how an industry's field conditions, combined with the actors’ characteristics, shape the pattern of institutional work. We propose a set of categories for the classification of institutional fields and differentiate three forms of institutional work. Empirical evidence on actor characteristics and institutional work originates from the bioeconomy segments of the chemical, plastic and construction materials industries. Our findings lead to a new field typology: the impact on actors’ institutional work can be conducive, barricading or exhausting. We recommend to question traditional actor classifications and formulate field specific policy measures for an emerging bioeconomy.

In sustainability transitions research, the deliberate destabilisation of socio-technical regimes is increasingly recognised as a central intervention point. Absent, however, are granular approaches for assessing whether regime destabilisation actually occurs in processes of systemic change. We propose to assess regime destabilisation through shifts in the institutionalisation of field logics. Methodologically, we employ Socio-Technical Configuration Analysis to map changes over time in the composition and alignment of institutional and technological concepts embedded in sectoral policy.

Empirically, we assess the extent to which post-Brexit agricultural policy reform in the United Kingdom marks the destabilisation of an unsustainable regime. Assessing legislative debate transcripts, we find that the previously dominant regime is only partly destabilised, as pre-existing development trajectories along established configurations of field logics, policy goals and instruments remain. These findings support the validity of our conceptual approach. Moreover, they nuance expectations about large-scale policy change as windows of opportunity for regime shifts.

Despite ongoing efforts, resource depletion and climate change continue to aggravate inequality. How can energy initiatives contribute to a more sustainable and equal society? This work aims to identify the challenges and opportunities facing neglected Brazilian communities in achieving fair energy transitions. Indigenous and traditional communities are field-assessed through site visits and stakeholder interviews. Appropriate energy generation options and consumption reduction strategies are identified. These alternatives are qualitatively evaluated using the Resource Complete Potential Assessment, a multi-criteria decision method encompassing techno-economic, environmental, social and political perspectives. Results highlight the importance of reliable, safe and clean energy in preserving fragile ecosystems and fortifying cultural identity and territorial resistance. While informal grid connections lack security and motivation for energy reduction, solar home systems offer empowerment opportunities and stimulate responsible consumption. However, it is necessary to strengthen regulatory and financial policies and establish an institutional commitment that guarantees adequate technical and training support.

Despite a broad consensus on sustainability, conflicts are increasingly prevalent in sustainability transitions. Although these conflicts significantly influence transition dynamics and socio-ecological futures, the role of conflicts in sustainability transitions remains insufficiently addressed. This paper aims to elucidate the contested dynamics of sustainability transitions by merging political ecology's emphasis on conflicts, nature, power, and justice with Gramscian hegemony theory. The integrated framework of Gramscian political ecology enables the analysis of transition conflicts as struggles for hegemony on the terrain of society-nature relations amid ecological crises. A brief comparative study of coal transitions in South Africa and Germany serves to illustrate the key insights that Gramscian political ecology offers into the contested nature of sustainability transitions, including conflict dynamics, power strategies, and barriers and potentials for radical transformative change.

The European Commission aims to increase the recycling of plastic packaging to 60% by 2025, requiring fundamental changes towards a more circular economy. Pathways for this transition require policy support that largely depends on their legitimacy in the public discourse. These normative aspects remain poorly understood for ‘in-between’ technologies, i.e., technologies that are no longer novel but struggle to move to the growth phase within the technological innovation system. Therefore, we ask: How do discourses shape technology legitimacy for in-between technologies? Drawing on the empirical example of chemical recycling, the analysis renders two principal findings. First, legitimising and delegitimising storylines present contesting views on in-between technologies regarding their technological aspects, environmental and social impacts, and economic and policy implications. Second, how discourses contribute to technology legitimacy depends on the actors and interests that drive the prevalent storylines in particular contexts.

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Advancing the understanding of social innovation in sustainability transitions’ is situated at the intersection of transition studies and social innovation research. In the past years, linkages between the fields of social innovation research and transition studies have been established: while transition scholars increasingly focus on social innovation phenomena, social innovation scholars engage in better understanding the relations between social innovation and societal transformation and its impacts towards sustainability. With its eight contributions, this special issue further explicates and broadens out this intersection of both fields, with an empirical focus on insights on energy transitions. Social innovation is introduced as a sensitising concept to advance our understanding of sustainability transitions along three themes: process of change; power and politics; as well as policies and policy mixes. This introduction closes by providing future research avenues and implications for policy.

Recent work has offered a more nuanced view of incumbent actors' roles in transitions, yet a comprehensive understanding of how reorientation activities and subsequent interaction patterns among different incumbent actor types shape the direction of system reconfigurations remains underexplored. This paper proposes a framework for empirically assessing actors' relational dynamics in response to low-carbon transitions and conceptualises actor interaction types and the nature of their interaction. Through a case study of the low-carbon transition of road freight transport in Sweden, we examine how reorientation dynamics, e.g., coalitions, competition, and contestations, can facilitate and hinder system reconfigurations by creating regime tensions. Our study highlights that incumbency reorientations are multi-dimensional, with actor involvement and strategies varying, leading to divergent actor positions and role constellations as actors attempt to reconfigure the focal regime. Extending beyond the Swedish case, five avenues for future research are outlined.

This article is an exploration of the role of design in sustainability transitions. Design has the potential to complement discussions on governance and actions related to transitions in the making, and activate scholars’ ability to critically assess existing technologies, technological components and systemic relations, and their capacity to propose alternatives. The authors draw on their engagement with the project ‘A Coherent Transport System for Greater Copenhagen 2050′, and on visioning for Copenhagen's future, with a special emphasis on discussions on mobility. The primary claim is that design can have a pivotal role in destabilizing existing regimes and creating systemic alternatives and transformative technologies and components. We propose a framework that focuses on three elements: the position of designing; integration across levels of design; and design-based criticism of the existing ‘de-scriptions’ to create new designs or ‘in-scriptions’.