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
  • Analyzing policy mixes for the circular economy transition: The case of recycled plastics in electronics
    Item type: Journal Article
    Pfeffer, David; Reike, Denise; Bening, Catharina R. (2025)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    This study analyzes how policy mixes influence the transition to a circular plastics economy, focusing on recycling in the electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) sector. Our research contributes to the literature on how policy mixes can accelerate sustainability transitions by proposing an adjusted framework tailored to the circular economy transition. We use qualitative content analysis of 14 EU legislative documents and conduct 20 semi-structured interviews with actors across the plastics and EEE value chain. We find that the current policy mix is not conducive to promoting this transition and highlight three key barriers. First, we find short-term inconsistencies between increasing plastic recycling rates and tightening chemical regulations on hazardous substances. Second, we identify a lack of economic incentives to stimulate demand for recycled content and note the absence of harmonized, mandatory criteria for defining end-of-waste and recycled content. Finally, coordination between product users, producers, and recycling operators shows deficits.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • Exploring the governance and politics of transformations towards sustainability
    Item type: Journal Article
    Patterson, James; Schulz, Karsten; Vervoort, Joost; et al. (2017)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    The notion of ‘transformations towards sustainability’ takes an increasingly central position in global sustainability research and policy discourse in recent years. Governance and politics are central to understanding and analysing transformations towards sustainability. However, despite receiving growing attention in recent years, the governance and politics aspects of transformations remain arguably under-developed in the global sustainability literature. A variety of conceptual approaches have been developed to understand and analyse societal transition or transformation processes, including: socio-technical transitions, social-ecological systems, sustainability pathways, and transformative adaptation. This paper critically surveys these four approaches, and reflects on them through the lens of the Earth System Governance framework (Biermann et al., 2009). This contributes to appreciating existing insights on transformations, and to identifying key research challenges and opportunities. Overall, the paper brings together diverse perspectives, that have so far remained largely fragmented, in order to strengthen the foundation for future research on transformations towards sustainability.
  • 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
  • Confronting the interconnection of chemical pollution and climate change
    Item type: Journal Article
    Bǎlan, Simona A.; van Bergen, Saskia K.; Blake, Ann; et al. (2025)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    Climate change and chemical pollution are interdependent planetary threats, but climate change mitigation efforts typically do not consider chemicals and materials. This may exacerbate chemical pollution and associated harm to human and environmental health. Because most chemicals and materials are currently derived from petrochemicals, the extraction of fossil fuels cannot be limited without transitioning chemical manufacturing to different carbon sources. However, simply changing the carbon source is insufficient and could exacerbate the biodiversity crisis. We propose a comprehensive strategy to address the interconnections between chemical pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss. This includes incentives for key actors to reduce the global production and consumption of chemicals and materials, to transition to chemicals and products that are safe and sustainable by design, to develop metrics and targets to assess progress, and to continuously evaluate and modify strategies based on performance metrics.
  • Science for sale? Why academic marketization is a problem and what sustainability research can do about it
    Item type: Journal Article
    Bauwens, Thomas; Reike, Denise; Calisto-Friant, Martín (2023)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    Scholars have long called out the flaws in academic publishing. However, a nuanced and constructive discussion of this issue is still lacking. We advocate that these flaws are symptoms of broader and intensifying marketization of academic research. To address this, we first discuss the two dimensions of marketization: the commodification of academic output and the ‘managerialization’ of academic governance. We then argue that sustainability research is especially vulnerable to marketization trends because of its broader set of values that cannot merely be reflected in academic output. We illustrate these values by discussing the nature of the challenges faced by sustainability researchers, their relationships with non-academic stakeholders, and the intrinsic normativity of their research. We explore potential ways forward to reform existing academic organizational structures and research funding system, embrace more inclusive and democratic research approaches, and support the development of nonprofit open-access journals.
  • Informal institutions matter: Professional culture and the development of biogas technology
    Item type: Journal Article
    Wirth, Steffen; Markard, Jochen; Truffer, Bernhard; et al. (2013)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
  • Neglected developments undermining sustainability transitions
    Item type: Journal Article
    Markard, Jochen; Van Lente, Harro; Wells, Peter; et al. (2021)
    Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
    Sustainability transitions are key to addressing grand challenges confronting humanity, yet there are many developments that undermine this endeavor. For example, new products and industries emerge that exacerbate existing challenges, instead of mitigating them. Context systems such as policy making, finance, education or independent journalism, which provide critical resources for transitions, transform in ways that hamper their ability to support sustainability transitions. We argue that transitions research needs explicitly to confront unfavorable developments in order to create a broader repertoire of strategies, including precautionary policies, to better orchestrate sustainability transitions.
Publications 1 - 10 of 29