Journal: Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions

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Elsevier

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ISSN

2210-4224

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2012 - 2019102020 - 202519
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Publications 1 - 10 of 29
  • A comparative and dynamic analysis of political party positions on energy technologies
    Item type: Journal Article
    Schmid, Nicolas (2021)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
  • Legitimising technologies for a circular economy: Contested discourses on innovation for plastics recycling in Europe
    Item type: Journal Article
    Zepa, Inese; Grudde, Vivian Z.; Bening, Catharina R. (2024)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    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.
  • The need to increase the policy relevance of the functional approach to Technological Innovation Systems (TIS)
    Item type: Journal Article
    Bening, Catharina R.; Blum, Nicola U.; Schmidt, Tobias (2015)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
  • The importance of stakeholders in scoping risk assessments – lessons from low-carbon transitions
    Item type: Journal Article
    van Vliet, Oscar P.R.; Hanger-Kopp, Susanne; Nikas, Alexandros; et al. (2020)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    Identifying the risks that could impact a low-carbon transition is a prerequisite to assessing and managing these risks. We systematically characterise risks associated with decarbonisation pathways in fifteen case studies conducted in twelve countries around the world. We find that stakeholders from business, government, NGOs, and others supplied some 40 % of these risk inputs, significantly widening the scope of risks considered by academics and experts. Overall, experts and academics consider more economic risks and assess these with quantitative methods and models, while other stakeholders consider political risks more. To avoid losing sight of risks that cannot be easily quantified and modelled, including some economic risks, impact assessment modelling should be complemented with qualitative research and active stakeholder engagement. A systematic risk elicitation facilitates communication with stakeholders, enables better risk mitigation, and increases the chance of a sustainable transition.
  • Assessing risks of low-carbon transition pathways
    Item type: Other Journal Item
    Lieu, Jenny; Hanger-Kopp, Susanne; van Vliet, Oscar; et al. (2020)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
  • Elite vs. mass politics of sustainability transitions
    Item type: Journal Article
    Schmid, Nicolas; Beaton, Christopher; Kern, Florian; et al. (2021)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    While the past decade of transitions scholarship has increasingly acknowledged the centrality of politics, key questions on transition politics deserve further research. Here, we develop a heuristic framework from the discipline of political science that separates transition politics into the classic categories of interests, ideas, institutions, as well as elite and mass politics. Based on this framework, we conduct a review of existing transitions literature on politics. We find that some areas of our framework are better covered than others. For instance, while the institutional foundations of elite politics are relatively well researched, there are only few studies on interests and ideas in mass politics. In geographical and sectoral terms, research is biased toward energy transitions in Europe and North America. Based on our review, we map areas for future research we believe to be indispensable to better understand varieties of transition politics.
  • Risk blindness in local perspectives about the Alberta oil sands hinders Canada's decarbonization
    Item type: Journal Article
    Virla, Luis D.; van de Ven, Dirk-Jan; Sampedro, Jon; et al. (2021)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    Local perspectives can conflict with national and international climate targets. This study explores three stakeholder (community, provincial, and federal) perspectives on the Alberta oil sands as risks for a sustainability transition in Canada. In an ex-post analysis, we compared outputs from stakeholder consultations and energy-economy models. Our research shows that different local stakeholders groups disregarded some policy risks for the Alberta oil sands and Canadian energy transition. These stakeholders expected the sector to grow, despite increasing environmental penalties and external market pressures. The study revealed that blind-spots on risks, or “risk blindness”, increased as stakeholders became less certain about policy climate goals. We argue that “risk blindness” could be amplified by dominant institutional narratives that contradict scientific research and international climate policy. Strategies that integrate local narratives, considered as marginalized, provide perspectives beyond emission reductions and are essential for meeting climate targets while supporting a just transition.
  • The Impact of Privatization on Sustainability Transitions: A Comparative Analysis of Dynamic Capabilities in Three Water Utilities
    Item type: Journal Article
    Lieberherr, Eva; Truffer, Bernhard (2015)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
  • Assessing risks of low-carbon transition pathways.
    Item type: Journal Issue
    (2020)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
  • A heuristic for conceptualizing and uncovering the determinants of agency in socio-technical transitions
    Item type: Journal Article
    Duygan, Mert; Stauffacher, Michael; Meylan, Grégoire (2019)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
Publications 1 - 10 of 29