Experiments in climate governance – lessons from a systematic review of case studies in transition research

Experimentation has been proposed as one of the ways in which public policy can drive sustainability transitions, notably by creating or delimiting space for experimenting with innovative solutions to sustainability challenges. In this paper we report on a systematic review of articles published between 2009 and 2015 that have addressed experiments aiming either at understanding decarbonisation transitions or enhancing climate resilience. Using the case survey method, we find few empirical descriptions of real-world experiments in climate and energy contexts in the scholarly literature, being observed in only 25 articles containing 29 experiments. We discuss the objectives, outputs and outcomes of these experiments noting that explicit experimenting with climate policies could be identified only in 12 cases. Based on the results we suggest a definition of climate policy experiments and a typology of experiments for sustainability transitions that can be used to better understand the role of and learn more effectively from experiments in sustainability transitions

Does religion promote environmental sustainability? : exploring the role of religion in local energy transitions

This article explores the role of religion in local energy transition processes. By combining insights from (a) sustainability studies and (b) academic contributions on religion and sustainability, a theoretical approach for describing the role of religion in local energy transitions is developed. Religion is conceived of as a subsystem among other local subsystems that potentially contribute via their competences to energy transition processes. Three potential functions of religion are identified: (1) Campaigning and intermediation in the public sphere; (2) “Materialization” of transitions in the form of participation in projects related to sustainable transitions; and (3) Dissemination of values and worldviews that empower environmental attitudes and action. These functions are studied in the case of the energy transition in Emden, a city in North-Western Germany. Although religion attends, to some degree, each of the three functions, it does not assume a dominant role relative to other local subsystems. Actors from other social subsystems appear to overtake these functions in a more efficient way. As such, in a highly environmentally active region, there are few indications for a specific function of religion. These results shed a critical light on the previously held assumption that religion has a crucial impact on sustainability transitions

The acceleration of urban sustainability transitions: a comparison of Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm

City-regions as sites of sustainability transitions have remained under-explored so far. With our comparative analysis of five diverse European city-regions, we offer new insights on contemporary sustainability transitions at the urban level. In a similar vein, the pre-development and the take-off phase of sustainability transitions have been studied in depth while the acceleration phase remains a research gap. We address this research gap by exploring how transitions can move beyond the seeding of alternative experiments and the activation of civil society initiatives. This raises the question of what commonalities and differences can be found between urban sustainability transitions. In our explorative study, we employ a newly developed framework of the acceleration mechanisms of sustainability transitions. We offer new insights on the multi-phase model of sustainability transitions. Our findings illustrate that there are no clear demarcations between the phases of transitions. From the perspective of city-regions, we rather found dynamics of acceleration, deceleration, and stagnation to unfold in parallel. We observed several transitions—transitions towards both sustainability and un-sustainability—to co-evolve. This suggests that the politics of persistence—the inertia and path dependencies of un-sustainability—should be considered in the study of urban sustainability transition

Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions: An Urban Metabolism Approach to Los Angeles Pincetl et al. Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions

Summary: This synthesis article presents an overview of an urban metabolism (UM) approach using mixed methods and multiple sources of data for Los Angeles, California. We examine electric energy use in buildings and greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, and calculate embedded infrastructure life cycle effects, water use and solid waste streams in an attempt to better understand the urban flows and sinks in the Los Angeles region (city and county). This quantification is being conducted to help policy-makers better target energy conservation and efficiency programs, pinpoint best locations for distributed solar generation, and support the development of policies for greater environmental sustainability. It provides a framework to which many more UM flows can be added to create greater understanding of the study area's resource dependencies. Going forward, together with policy analysis, UM can help untangle the complex intertwined resource dependencies that cities must address as they attempt to increase their environmental sustainability

The EU's twin transitions towards sustainability and digital leadership: a coherent or fragmented policy field?

In order to achieve the goal of climate neutrality, while also enhancing Europe’s industrial competitiveness on the global stage, the acceleration of the twin – green and digital – transitions has been among the top priorities for the European Union (EU). Given the multiplicity of policy areas involved in these twin transitions as well as the nature of the EU as a multilevel organisation, coherence is the key requirement for the twin transitions to be successful. Drawing on the concept of coherence, this article explores whether the EU can be considered a coherent actor when pursuing the twin transitions. It understands coherence as a process to reduce contradictions across different policy domains rather than as a status where no contradictions exist. It also challenges previous views centred solely on coherence during policy implementation, and proposes a broader assessment that begins by framing different policy domains as mutually beneficial and aligned towards common goals. This perspective introduces two dimensions of coherence – conceptual and operational – along horizontal and vertical levels. By examining how policies are framed and interconnected across different levels of governance and policy agendas, this study reveals that while the link between the green and digital transitions and the need for coordination across different governance levels has been widely accepted, conceptual coherence varies across governance levels and policy areas. Furthermore, the study argues that operational coherence – putting ideas into practice – lags behind conceptual coherence, which highlights the challenges of implementing the twin transitions effectively

Urban sustainability transitions in a context of multi-level governance: A comparison of four European states

Urban sustainability transitions have attracted increasing academic interest. However, the political-institutional contexts, in which these urban sustainability transitions unfold and by which they are incited, shaped, or inhibited, have received much less attention. This is why we aim at extending previous studies of sustainability transitions by incorporating a multi-level governance perspective. While multi-level governance has been a long-standing theme in political science research, it has remained under-explored in the study of sustainability transitions. This claim is the starting point of our comparative analysis of urban sustainability transitions in Brighton (UK), Dresden (Germany), Genk (Belgium) and Stockholm (Sweden). Our approach “brings the politics back in” by elucidating the dynamics of power concentration and power dispersion generated by different national governance contexts. In our analysis, we explore which opportunities and obstacles these diverse governance contexts provide for urban sustainability transitions

Mobile transitions : exploring synergies for urban sustainability research

Urban sustainability approaches focusing on a wide range of topics such as infrastructure and mobility, green construction and neighbourhood planning, or urban nature and green amenities have attracted scholarly interest for over three decades. Recent debates on the role of cities in climate change mitigation have triggered new attempts to conceptually and methodologically grasp the cross-sectorial and cross-level interplay of enrolled actors. Within these debates, urban and economic geographers have increasingly adopted co-evolutionary approaches such as the social studies of technology (SST or ‘transition studies’). Their plea for more spatial sensitivity of the transition approach has led to promising proposals to adapt geographic perspectives to case studies on urban sustainability. This paper advocates engagement with recent work in urban studies, specifically policy mobility, to explore conceptual and methodological synergies. It emphasises four strengths of an integrated approach: (1) a broadened understanding of innovations that emphasises not only processes of knowledge generation but also of knowledge transfer through (2) processes of learning, adaptation and mutation, (3) a relational understanding of the origin and dissemination of innovations focused on the complex nature of cities and (4) the importance of individual actors as agents of change and analytical scale that highlights social processes of innovation. The notion of urban assemblages further allows the operationalisation of both the relational embeddedness of local policies as well as their cross-sectoral actor constellations

Digital innovation's contribution to sustainability transitions

Digital innovation is increasingly mentioned as a potential key contributor to sustainability transitions. However, there has been little theoretical discussion of this topic. In this conceptual paper, the authors draw on literature on both sustainability transition studies and innovation studies to explore critically the contribution of digital innovation in sustainability transitions. They conceptualize transitions as fundamental changes in patterns of production and consumption, such as those relating to energy. Radical innovation leads to changes in the structure of socio-technical systems underlying such patterns, while incremental innovation contributes to maintaining the structure and current patterns. The authors suggest that digital innovations may contribute positively to sustainability transitions through couplings with sustainable innovations. They propose the following typology of such couplings: incremental twin innovations, sustainability supported digital innovations, digitally supported sustainable innovations, and radical twin innovations. Radical twin innovations may possess the greatest potential for sustainability transitions, as they are linked to structural change and thus open new pathways for sustainability transitions, whereas incremental twin innovations merely optimize current unsustainable systems. The typology is illustrated with examples from shipping and from electricity systems, and some of the complexities of twin transitions encountered by researchers and practitioners alike are discussed.publishedVersio

Micro-Dynamics and Institutional Change in Regional Transition Paths to Sustainability

Major ecological and social challenges require fundamental societal changes towards more sustainable production and consumption patterns. An important basis for such "sustainability transitions" are changes in institutional structures (e.g., laws, values and interpretive schemes) that promote sustainable social practices. Currently, little is known about how such institutional changes are triggered and how they evolve. In particular, it is poorly understood how the activities of actors on the micro-level affect the development of institutional structures in the long run and why such processes vary between regions. This thesis analyzes institutional dynamics in sustainability transitions from a regional perspective in order to gain a better understanding of the place-specificity of these processes. Based on the premise that regional sustainability transitions differ from sectoral transition processes, which have hitherto been in the focus of transition research, the dissertation follows three aims: (1) to develop a conceptual framework that captures the particularities of institutional change in regional sustainability transitions; (2) to develop a methodological approach that enables to analyze the complex institutional dynamics underlying regional sustainability transitions; (3) to generate empirical insights into regional sustainability transitions and the actors that drive them on the micro-level. The newly developed conceptual framework of “Regional Transition Paths to Sustainability (RTPS)” builds on insights from Sustainability Transitions literature, Neo-institutional Theory and Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG). Compared to existing approaches that serve to investigate sustainability transitions (in particular the multi-level perspective; MLP), the RTPS approach considers the particularities that shape sustainability transitions at the regional level, such as their gradual and regime-overarching nature, the spatial proximity of actors, regional path dependencies, and the embeddedness of regions in multi-scalar governance networks. The framework focuses on new organizational forms as enablers of both, change and stability, in regional transition paths to sustainability. In doing so, the framework is sensitive to gradual changes in regional institutional structures and their underlying micro-dynamics. Based on this theoretical basis, the methodological approach of a “transition topology” is developed. The topology makes it possible to visualize and reconstruct institutional and organizational changes in their specific time-space context. The approach also makes apparent how institutional change is connected to organizational change at the regional level. In this way, it can be depicted how processes at the micro-level induce gradual changes in the regional path that lead to a more fundamental change at the macro-level over time. The topology allows for systematic comparisons between sustainability transitions in different regions. The conceptual and methodological approaches are applied in three empirical studies: a) an in-depth study of the micro-dynamics of regional sustainability transition in Augsburg (Germany), b) a comparison of the involvement of universities in regional sustainability transitions in Augsburg and Linz (Austria), and c) an investigation into the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in regional sustainability transitions in Upper Austria. These studies are complemented by an analysis (based on a mixed-methods research design) of the motives of researchers for choosing a sustainability-related research topic. | iv All the studies shed light on the processes and dynamics that lead to the diversity of transition pathways across space (e.g., regarding their different pace, their thematic breath), which remained largely “hidden” in previous research on sustainability transitions. They highlight the role of valuedriven actors in regional sustainability transitions, who are often involved in several thematic fields at the same time and who are thus able to realize synergies. In particular, the relevance of new organizational forms for institutional change in regional sustainability transitions becomes apparent. While temporary organizational forms foster the development of sustainable social practices, more permanent organizations are important to stabilize these newly developed practices. The thesis makes an original contribution to the Geography of Sustainability Transitions on a conceptual, methodological and empirical level. It enables a better understanding of institutional dynamics in regional sustainability transitions and therefore generates a basis for promoting such processes in practice