A Policy and Evaluation Framework for Sustainable Transitions - An Energy Policy Approach

Abstract

The climate change and the social crisis launched the basis for the policy discussion about future trajectories of development and sustainability. Innovation policies are expected to promote the transformation of complex socio-technical systems and call for fundamentally different societal production and consumption patterns. This is strictly associated with energy systems and energy policies. A policy framework was conceptualized considering three levels approach: the policy shape at the micro level, the policy context at the meso level and the policy universe at the landscape level. Possible failures were classified according to the levels. To minorize these failures, an evaluation framework was developed considering both the policy outputs and the social impact outcomes - an example of renewable energy communities was applied to the policy and evaluation framework. The intended outcome is a reconfiguration of sociotechnical innovation systems through new technologies’ development, new actor-network and institutional reconfiguration promoting changes in economic dynamics as well as the development of new social competencies with learning, reflexivity and feedback loops for overcoming obstacles.