Dutch policies to manage the transition to sustainable energy

Many countries are committed to sustainability but are struggling with how to do this. Most countries opted for sustainability councils and the development of sustainability indicators. The Dutch government followed a different track. It believed that sustainability requires some fundamental changes in functional systems of for example energy, transport and agriculture. It conceptualised the quest towards sustainability as an issue of managing transitions in functional systems. In this paper we examine why the Dutch government became interested in transitions. We will see that transition management was attractive because it allowed different ministries to pursue their own agenda but in a different way: with more attention to innovation and learning. We will look at the model of transition management and the Dutch policies for managing the energy transition. The model is believed to be an interesting model of governance, employing an integrative and multi-scale framework for policy deliberation, choice of instruments, and actions by individuals, private and public organizations, helping society to escape lock-in while avoiding new evolutionary traps

Innovation policy for the Dutch energy transition Operationalising transition management?

The term transition is a key term of the fourth national environmental policy plan (NMP4, 2001), which put forward transition management (Rotmans et al, 2000) as a new policy approach for dealing with persistent and highly complex societal problems such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, overexploitation of resources and health risks related to the use of dangerous, non-natural substances. The NMP4 selected the energy supply, mobility, agriculture and the use of biodiversity and natural resources as priorities for developing transition management activities. The Ministry of Economic Affairs (holding responsibility over energy and innovation policy) has since the NMP4 been the leading actor in the so-called ‘energy-transition’. Several activities have been undertaken, based on the basic principles underlying transition management; long term visions as framework for short-term action, a multi-actor approach and a focus on learning and experiments. The approach has stimulated the involvement of a large number of stakeholders and led to the developments of shared visions, ambitions and strategies, experiments and projects. Besides, the approach itself has generated questions regarding regular policies, for example innovation and technology policies, and led to debates on policy integration and barriers in existing regulations. This discussion has been actively picked up by the Ministry and governmental advisory boards for energy and environment (Energieraad and VROM-raad 2004). It is an example of policy learning in which it was believed that sustainability requires some fundamental changes in functional systems, which in turn require policy-innovation. In this paper we will look at why the Ministry was interested in fostering an energy transition (where we will see that economic reasons, notably the willingness to create green energy business, was an important consideration). The paper will describe the policies and stakeholder process, which will be assessed from a transition management perspective. This means that the paper uses the multi-level, multi-phase transition management framework (Loorbach 2004b) to evaluate the energy-transition approach as developed by the ministry of Economic Affairs, in terms of content (what types of visions and experiments are developed?) and in terms of process (what kind of actors are involved, what instruments are used?). Special attention will be given to the nature of the policies developed and their difference with and implications for ‘regular’ policies. We will compare the difference with past policies and the changes in the system of governance. The paper will also seek to answer a more speculative issue: What are the prospects of the Dutch approach to achieve a transition and a flourishing sustainable energy business

Incremental Steps and their Limits

Integrierte Produktpolitik bietet einen Rahmen für die Verbesserung der Umweltleistung von Produkten. Sie ist geeignet, schrittweise Verbesserungsinnovationen bei Produkten zu fördern. Doch läuft sie Gefahr, sich zu sehr auf bestehende Produktsysteme zu konzentrieren und hier­durch die für weit reichendere Umweltentlastungen erforderlichen Systeminnovationen zu vernachlässigen. Deshalb muss sie um weitere Politikansätze, wie etwa "transition manage­ment", ergänzt werden

Ten themes for eco-innovation policies in Europe

Most developed countries have innovation policies for green innovation. This paper examines the rationale for such policies, offers a typology of eco-innovation and develops ten themes for eco-innovation policy, which are: 1) the need for policy to be based on identified barriers, 2) preventing windfall profits, 3) specific versus generic support policies, 4) balance between policy measures and timing, 5) targeted spending in areas where innovation is needed, 6) missions, 7) strategic intelligence for innovation, 8) portfolios, 9) policy learning and 10) policy coordination and public-private interactions. Relevant cases are discussed and empirical information is provided. It is proposed that the ten themes serve as a framework for eco-innovation policy-making and policy evaluation

Diversifying deep transitions:Accounting for socio-economic directionality

The paper sets out to enrich the emerging debate on ‘deep’, transversal transitions. It does so by drawing attention to socio-economic developments neglected in the Deep Transition (DT) framework of Kanger and Schot, such as marketization, labour contracts becoming more individual and precarious, and changing human beliefs, aspirations, needs and wants as important developments. The framework of Deep Transition is criticised for neglecting tensions and contestations about progress, the socio-economic order and distributional issues. This paper aims to complement ‘deep transitions’ research with insights about socio-economic transformation processes. These are shown to be conflict-ridden and full of tensions, creating pressures on socioeconomic orders and institutional logics. Because of this, development does not follow a neat pattern of convergence. In addition to identifying neglected issues and conceptual blind spots, the paper also outlines the scope for conceptual bridging between socio-technical and socio-economic transformation perspectives through attention to institutional logics and dialectics of change. We make a plea for a broader DT research agenda that covers relevant socio-economic rules, metaregimes and institutional contradictions. Attention to directionality helps to deal with three weaknesses of the DT framework: the assumption of convergence, materialism, and insufficient attention to the multitude of value orientations and logics

Policies tackling the “web of constraints” on resource-efficient practices: the case of mobility

In practice, environmental policy is only moving slowly from a focus on promoting environmental technologies to a focus on greening socio-technical systems. Policy measures to stimulate resource efficiency (RE) typically address the national, sectoral, or company level. This article shows how an analysis addressing practices that citizens engage in, such as eating or mobility, can contribute to more effective RE policy. It is instrumental to highlight policy contradictions in the current mix of policies and offer suggestions for stronger policy synergies. We offer a conceptual and empirical analysis based on the results of a large-scale survey (1200+ respondents) in three countries (Austria, Hungary, and The Netherlands), focusing on one of the most resource intensive consumption domains: mobility. We apply a framework that includes the social context of resource consumption, addressing how practices that citizens engage in are shaped by both “collective” physical infrastructures, the business models of products, social meanings, and regulatory incentives, and also by “individual” knowledge and skills, values, and financial capabilities. Our “web of constraints” perspective on RE highlights the interrelatedness of individual actor and collective factors. It is instrumental for an integrative policy discussion, addressing a range of factors hindering RE, anticipating policy contradictions, to capitalize on synergies

Sustainable business model innovation: The role of boundary work for multi-stakeholder alignment

This study focuses on the boundary-spanning nature of sustainable business model innovation, studying multi-stakeholder engagement and alignment. Drawing on the concept of boundary work, we explore the different types of organizational boundary changes between focal companies and their external stakeholders, investigating specifically the process of exploring, negotiating, disrupting and realigning organizational boundaries. Based on an exploratory study of nine different sustainable business model initiatives from for-profit and non-profit organizations, our analysis shows how actors involved need to find alignment at normative, instrumental and strategic dimensions in order to achieve sustainable value creation. However, complexity for alignment emerges through different understandings of value,diverging interests, division of risks and responsibilities, and existing processes and activities that limits actors’ openness to align. Mutual boundary changes are thus necessary in the process of multi-stakeholder engagement in order to enhance organizations’understanding of value and to capture the envisioned value. This paper functions as an agenda-setting paper, presenting first insights on how the boundary work lens can advance our understanding of alignment processes between focal organizations and their external stakeholders, required for sustainable business model innovation