First published by Profil-Verlag:
Voß, Jan-Peter; Truffer, Bernhard; Konrad, Kornelia: Sustainability Foresight as a method to shape socio-technical transformation in utility systems. - In: Bammé, Arno; Getzinger, Günter; Wieser, Bernhard (Ed.): Yearbook 2005 of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society. - München, Wien: Profil-Verlag, 2005. - (Technik- und Wissenschaftsforschung ; 47). - ISBN: 3-89019-595-4. pp. 285–305.Utility systems for the provision of electricity, gas, water or telecommunication are at the interface of society and nature. They are of central importance for sustainable development but particularly difficult to shape. Large technical systems are intertwined with patterns of market organisation, administrative institutions, user routines and policy networks. Transformation is not matter of planning and control but of co-evolution across such heterogeneous domains. The transformation of utility systems thus exemplifies the limits of conventional steering approaches to achieve sustainable development. Shaping strategies are needed which take up uncertainty, ambivalence and distributed influence as basic features of shaping sustainable development. Sustainability Foresight represents a method that is currently being probed in German utility systems
