Exploring the role of failure in socio-technical transitions research

In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary review of ‘failure’ in transitions research. What is meant by failure, and is the community biased against it? How is failure explained through different perspectives? How can failures be addressed more appropriately in transitions studies? We synthesize a large body of evidence spanning transitions studies, innovation studies, science and technology studies, organisation and management studies, policy studies and the history of technology to probe and sharpen these questions. We examine within these literatures the instances and possibilities of success with transitions and discuss why this may be problematic, organising our analysis around four types of bias (selection, cognitive, interpretive, and prescription). In addition, we review three ‘families’ of framings of failure put forward in and around the socio-technical transitions literature, notably discrete failure events, systemic failings and processual accounts of failure, and discuss how they can be constructively put to work

Guides or gatekeepers? Incumbent-oriented transition intermediaries in a low-carbon era

Transitions intermediaries—agents who connect diverse groups of actors involved in transitions processes and their skills, resources and expectations—are becoming more prominent in research on low-carbon transitions. Most work, however, has focused on their ability to push innovations or emerging technologies forward, emphasising their involvement in disrupting incumbent regimes or firms. However, in focusing on new entrants, often at the grassroots level, such literature runs the risk of overlooking the potentially positive role that incumbent transition intermediaries—those oriented to work with or centrally consider the interests of dominant government, market or civic stakeholders—can play in meeting sustainable energy and transport goals. In this paper, we focus specifically on five different incumbent transition intermediaries—Smart Energy GB in the United Kingdom, Energiesprong in the Netherlands, SULPU in Finland, CERTU in France, and the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association in Norway—and explain their efforts to meet socially desirable goals of accelerating innovation or decarbonizing energy or transport systems. We ask: Why were these intermediaries created, and what problems do they respond to? How do they function? What are their longer-term visions and strategies? What are their longer-term strategies and aspirations? In what ways do they reflect, reinforce, or otherwise shape incumbency? In answering these questions via a comparative case study approach, the paper aims to make contributions to the study of incumbency intermediation in the context of transitions, to identifying different types of incumbent intermediaries (market, governmental, civic), and to informing debates over energy and climate policy and politics

The decarbonisation divide: contextualizing landscapes of low-carbon exploitation and toxicity in Africa

Much academic research on low-carbon transitions focuses on the diffusion or use of innovations such as electric vehicles or solar panels, but overlooks or obscures downstream and upstream processes, such as mining or waste flows. Yet it is at these two extremes where emerging low-carbon transitions in mobility and electricity are effectively implicated in toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, exacerbation of gender inequality, exploitation of child labor, and the subjugation of ethnic minorities. We conceptualize these processes as part of an emerging “decarbonisation divide.” To illustrate this divide with clear insights for political ecology, sustainability transitions, and energy justice, this study draws from extensive fieldwork examining cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the processing and recycling of electronic waste in Ghana. It utilizes original data from 34 semi-structured research interviews with experts and 69 community interviews with artisanal cobalt miners, e-waste scrapyard workers, and other stakeholders, as well as 50 site visits. These visits included 30 industrial and artisanal cobalt mines in the DRC, as well as associated infrastructure such as trading depots and processing centers, and 20 visits to the Agbogbloshie scrapyard and neighborhood alongside local waste collection sites, electrical repair shops, recycling centers, and community e-waste dumps. The study proposes a concerted set of policy recommendations for how to better address issues of exploitation and toxicity, suggestions that go beyond the often-touted solutions of formalization or financing. Ultimately, the study holds that we must all, as researchers, planners, and citizens, broaden the criteria and analytical parameters we use to evaluate the sustainability of low-carbon transitions

Dispossessed by decarbonisation: reducing vulnerability, injustice, and inequality in the lived experience of low-carbon pathways

This study examines the justice and equity implications of four low-carbon transitions, and it reveals the “lived experiences” of decarbonisation as manifested across Africa and Europe. Based on extensive, original mixed methods empirical research – including expert interviews, focus groups, internet forums, community interviews, and extended site visits and naturalistic observation – it asks: How are four specific decarbonisation pathways linked to negative impacts within specific communities? Relatedly, what vulnerabilities do these transitions exacerbate in these communities? Lastly, how can such vulnerabilities be better addressed with policy? The paper documents a troublesome cohabitation between French wineries and nuclear power, the negative effects on labor groups and workers in Eastern Germany by a transition to solar energy, the stark embodied externalities in electronic waste (e-waste) flows from smart meters accumulating in Ghana, and the precarious exploitation of children involved in cobalt mining for electric vehicle batteries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The aims and objectives of the study are threefold: (1) to showcase how four very different vulnerable communities have been affected by the negative impacts of decarbonisation; (2) to reveal tensions and tradeoffs between European transitions and local and global justice concerns; and (3) to inform energy and climate policy. In identifying these objectives, our goal is not to stop or slow down all low-carbon transitions. Rather, the study suggests that the research and policy communities ought to account for, and seek to minimize, a broader range of social and environmental sustainability risks. Sustainability transitions and decarbonisation pathways must become more egalitarian, fair, and just

Sociotechnical transitions for deep decarbonization

Rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emission are needed to avoid dangerous climate change. This will necessitate low-carbon transitions across electricity, transport, heat, industrial, forestry, and agricultural systems. But despite recent rapid growth in renewable electricity generation, the rate of progress toward this wider goal of deep decarbonization remains slow. Moreover, many policy-oriented energy and climate researchers and models remain wedded to disciplinary approaches that focus on a single piece of the low-carbon transition puzzle, yet avoid many crucial real-world elements for accelerated transitions (1). We present a “sociotechnical” framework to address the multidimensionality of the deep decarbonization challenge and show how coevolutionary interactions between technologies and societal groups can accelerate low-carbon transitions

Energy modellers should explore extremes more systematically in scenarios

Scenarios are the primary tool for examining how current decisions shape the future, but the future is affected as much by out-of-ordinary extremes as by generally expected trends. Energy modellers can study extremes both by incorporating them directly within models and by using complementary off-model analyses

The influence of anesthetics, neurotransmitters and antibiotics on the relaxation processes in lipid membranes

In the proximity of melting transitions of artificial and biological membranes fluctuations in enthalpy, area, volume and concentration are enhanced. This results in domain formation, changes of the elastic constants, changes in permeability and slowing down of relaxation processes. In this study we used pressure perturbation calorimetry to investigate the relaxation time scale after a jump into the melting transition regime of artificial lipid membranes. This time corresponds to the characteristic rate of domain growth. The studies were performed on single-component large unilamellar and multilamellar vesicle systems with and without the addition of small molecules such as general anesthetics, neurotransmitters and antibiotics. These drugs interact with membranes and affect melting points and profiles. In all systems we found that heat capacity and relaxation times are related to each other in a simple manner. The maximum relaxation time depends on the cooperativity of the heat capacity profile and decreases with a broadening of the transition. For this reason the influence of a drug on the time scale of domain formation processes can be understood on the basis of their influence on the heat capacity profile. This allows estimations of the time scale of domain formation processes in biological membranes.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Comparing nuclear power trajectories in Germany and the UK: from ‘regimes' to ‘democracies’ in sociotechnical transitions and Discontinuities

This paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a ‘nuclear renaissance’, promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe.Here,this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of‘sustainability transitions’. To this end, an ‘abductive’ approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to the ‘focal regime configuration’ of nuclear power and associated ‘challenger technologies’ like renewables. It is ‘internal’ criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with ‘external’ criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. ‘Internal’ criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany– the reverse of what is occurring. ‘External’ criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics –especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader ‘qualities of democracy’. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes ‘democracy’, a rich political science literature on this point is unanimous in characterising Germany more positively than the UK. Although based only on a single case,a potentially important question is nonetheless raised as to whether sociotechnical regime theory might usefully give greater attention to the general importance of various aspects of democracy in constituting conditions for significant technological discontinuities and transformations. If so, the policy implications are significant. A number of important areas are identified for future research, including the roles of diverse understandings and specific aspects of democracy and the particular relevance of military nuclear commitments– whose under-discussion in civil nuclear policy literatures raises its own questions of democratic accountability

Of temporality and plurality: an epistemic and governance agenda for accelerating just transitions for energy access and sustainable development

The complementarity of sustainable energy transitions and energy access provision are one of the key characteristics of both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. In this perspective piece, we offer an epistemic and governance agenda to advance the imperative of speed in meeting both ambitions and to acknowledge the plurality of disciplines, actors, and institutions involved. Recognizing that the processes required to achieve these global goals entail navigating tensions, we suggest that shifts in ways knowledge is produced and transitions are governed could be based on a justice framework

Passive cation permeability of turtle colon: Evidence for a negative interaction between intracellular sodium and apical sodium permeability

The role of intracellular sodium in the regulation of apical sodium permeability was investigated in an electrically “tight” epithelium, the turtle colon. In the presence of low mucosal sodium (3 mM) and serosal ouabain, an inhibitor of the basolateral sodium pump, the apical membrane retained a substantial amiloride-sensitive, sodium conductance and the basolateral membrane exhibited a barium-sensitive potassium conductance in parallel with a significant sodium (and lithium) conductance. In the presence of a high mucosal sodium concentration (114 mM), however, inhibition of active sodium absorption by ouabain led to a disappearance of the amiloride-sensitive, transepithelial conductance that was due, at least in part, to a virtual abolition of the apical sodium permeability. Two lines of evidence indicate that this permeability decrease was dependent upon an increase in intracellular sodium content. First, raising the mucosal sodium concentration from 3–114 mM in the presence of ouabain reversibly inhibited the amiloride-sensitive conductance. The time course of the decline in conductance paralleled the apparent intracellular accumulation of sodium in exchange for potassium, which was monitored as a transient deflection in the amiloride-sensitive, short-circuit current. Second, the inhibitory effect of mucosal sodium-addition was markedly attenuated by serosal barium, which prevented the accumulation of sodium by blocking the electrically coupled, basolateral potassium exit. These results support the notion of a “negative feedback” effect of intracellular sodium on the apical sodium permeability.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47451/1/424_2004_Article_BF00583286.pd