Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions最新文献

{"title":"Integrating spatial planning and energy policy in The Netherlands: challenges and lessons for societal energy transitions","authors":"Henk-Jan Kooij ,&nbsp;Martijn Gerritsen ,&nbsp;Kristof Van Assche","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101023","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101023","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite The Netherlands' advanced spatial planning system and robust energy infrastructure, attempts to integrate energy policy and spatial planning for energy transition faced significant challenges. This paper examines these efforts and their impact on both systems within nation-wide discussions, using social systems theory to explore why a cohesive strategy failed to emerge. It draws on Luhmann’s theory of social systems and his concept of irritations, combined with a theory-informed thematic analysis, to understand the communications and perturbations between energy planning and spatial planning. The paper argues that the planning and energy systems were unable to adequately understand and coordinate with each other, partly due to the lack of a unifying perspective and the inherent tensions within each system. These challenges hindered the formulation of effective energy transition strategies on a policy level. To distinguish between the degree to which communications of energy planning organizations successfully initiated internal reflections on and revisions of spatial planning organizations’ interests, operations, and priorities, we introduced three types of perturbations, so-called ‘irritations’: <strong><em>incomprehensible, inapt</em></strong> and <strong><em>interpretive</em></strong> irritations. The Dutch experience offers broader insights into the complexities of aligning spatial planning with energy policy in the pursuit of energy transition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101023"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144313468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Steaming ahead while also losing pressure? Examining the roles of the state in Kenya’s geothermal energy transition","authors":"Matthew Tyce","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper aligns with, and seeks to build on, literature which has called for more sophisticated, dynamic conceptions of ‘the state’ in sustainability transitions research. Specifically, the paper echoes scholars who have argued that relational state theory can offer a useful approach for understanding the complex, often contradictory roles that states play in shaping sustainability transitions. The paper demonstrates its utility through the case of Kenya’s geothermal energy transition. Since the early-2000s, geothermal has displaced hydro and thermal power as Kenya’s biggest source of electricity and, today, Kenya ranks seventh amongst geothermal power producers worldwide. Mainstream accounts often appear to locate Kenya’s geothermal ‘success’ in the adoption of institutional arrangements that have promoted private investment and restricted the state’s presence. Where the state is recognised, it is often seemingly for dutifully performing the functions of a ‘de-risking state’. Critical academic literature identifies a more expansive role for the state. However, it, too, underplays various ways in which the Kenyan state – and balance of social forces underpinning it – has shaped geothermal developments. A relational approach, by contrast, uncovers a fuller, more extensive role for state actors in Kenya’s geothermal transition. It also yields a more complicated, nuanced account in which state actors have not always supported geothermal expansion and, in some respects, have actively forestalled it, through combinations of intra-state turf wars, flawed planning processes and personalistic rent-seeking.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101008"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144291354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Organising the subjects of responsible consumption: Analysing the locus of responsibility for transitions in the UK food sector (2007-2021)","authors":"David M. Evans,&nbsp;Jonathan D. Beacham","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101022","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101022","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper considers the phenomenon of responsible consumption, which we approach as an organisational field. In doing so, we contribute analytic guidance for the study of both consumption and responsibility in sustainability transitions. Our analysis draws on three qualitative longitudinal case studies of ostensibly ‘consumer-facing’ policies and initiatives for healthy and sustainable food: carbon labelling, food waste campaigning, and sugar taxation. In each case we explore the mechanisms by which ‘consumers' are responsibilised and trace the effects of these over time. We demonstrate that responsibilisation is a dynamic and ongoing process that cannot be reduced to the unidirectional transfer of responsibilities from organisations to individuals. We also link shifts in the relationships between, and responsibilities of, different actor groups to tangible changes in the configuration of food consumption practices. Taken together, we argue that the enactment of responsible consumption is not contingent on the success of efforts to responsibilise individual consumers. To conclude, we consider the implications of our analysis for theoretical and practical understandings of sustainability transitions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101022"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144263653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Governing complexity: A comparative assessment of four governance models with applications to climate change mitigation and adaptation","authors":"Niko Soininen ,&nbsp;J.B. Ruhl ,&nbsp;Barbara Cosens ,&nbsp;Lance Gunderson","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101020","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101020","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Responses to ongoing global climate change include economy-wide mitigation efforts and large-scale societal adaptation that demand novel approaches to governance. An array of innovative governance models has been proposed since the late 1900s and early 2000s as scholars observed inadequacies of government-centric and formal legal approaches to natural resource management, complexity and uncertainty, failures of neoliberal economic reforms, and cross-scale institutional arrangements. Four such models have come to dominate the solution-oriented discourse on climate change governance: adaptive governance, transition governance, transformation governance, and anticipatory governance. We compare these models in terms of their origin and applicability to deal with the complexities of climate change. Our particular interest lies in how the four governance models propose to manage complexity and how they envision the role of governments as actors and law as an instrument in steering societal responses to climate change. Our analysis shows that while transition and transformation governance are often portrayed as more readily applicable to climate change mitigation, and adaptive and anticipatory governance to climate change adaptation, this sharp dichotomy does not hold water on closer scrutiny. Rather, all four governance models are applicable to different aspects of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Concerning complexity, all four governance models take some variation of social-ecological-technological complexity as their starting point. Finally on the role of government and law, adaptive governance, transition governance and one branch of transformation governance favour a facilitative role of governments, while another branch of transformation governance calls for a more involved and directive role for governments with heavy legal instrumentation and legal systemic change to match. Anticipatory governance plays more of a supporting role for implementing the other models and can range from facilitative to directive in that respect. With these observations, we hope to clarify the current global discussion over the perspectives offered by the four governance models in governing complexity in the context of climate change and beyond.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101020"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144263654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Untangling digitalisation: a topic of growing relevance for transition scholars","authors":"Amelie Bennich","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101021","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101021","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the growing interest in so-called ‘twin transitions’, i.e. the intersection of the sustainable and digital development, digitalisation has emerged as a topic of interest within the transition field. However, despite recent advancements, research on digitalisation in this field remains conceptually and empirically narrow. This perspective builds on previous calls for transition scholars to pay closer attention to digitalisation but advocates for greater diversity, creativity, and clarity in how it is studied. In particular, it highlights three main suggestions for advancement. First, transition scholars should engage more critically with the digitalisation literature to better untangle the nature of digital phenomena. Second, they should take a leading role in developing a systemic understanding of digitalisation, addressing gaps in the broader digitalisation literature. Finally, they should leverage the conceptual flexibility of digital phenomena to generate novel insights that enrich transition studies. The relationship between digitalisation and sustainability is complex and ambiguous, requiring a broad array of empirical and theoretical approaches to fully grasp their interconnections.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101021"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144255030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Interactions between Sustainability assessment and Sustainability transitions research: The benefits of combining approaches","authors":"Axel Lindfors,&nbsp;Wisdom Kanda,&nbsp;Marcus Gustafsson,&nbsp;Stefan Anderberg","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101019","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101019","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article explored opportunities and benefits of combining insights from sustainability assessment and sustainability transitions research. First, an overview of both research areas regarding their key ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions is presented. Second, an analysis of what benefits both areas may bring to the another was conducted. Finally, a synthesis was done based on recent literature in the cross-section between the two areas of research. The overview showed that there are fundamental differences between the two research areas, such as in how sustainability is conceptualized, regarding what knowledge is needed to achieve sustainability, and in the units and levels of analysis applied. Despite this, several ways in which interaction between the two areas and cross-pollination of results could be beneficial was shown. Finally, it is argued that a multi-disciplinary approach—where theories and methods are combined sequentially or in parallel—is preferred from a practical perspective.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101019"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144205117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Legal institutionalism and the role of law in market transformation during sustainability transitions: exploring alternative ontological perspectives","authors":"Aikaterini Argyrou,&nbsp;Nicolas Chevrollier,&nbsp;Jeroen Veldman","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Grand societal challenges ask that we speed up transformations in markets towards sustainability. Speeding up market transformations in sustainability transitions is determined in part by the way in which law and legal institutions enable or obstruct these transformations. We investigate the role of law and organizations in relation to market transformation in sustainability transitions. We introduce legal institutionalism to discern different understandings of the role of law as a barrier or a driver in market transformation. Under legal institutionalism, we elaborate on two ontological perspectives, namely the materialist transaction cost approach, and the alternative normative culturalist approach to investigate the behavioral assumptions of market actors in relation to law and organizations as well as of respective barriers and drivers in sustainability transitions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101011"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144178274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Incumbent firms in sustainability transitions – Different conceptions, heterogeneous roles and ideal types","authors":"Gregor Kungl","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper gives an overview of the state of research on the role of incumbent firms in emission-intensive economic sectors (energy supply, transportation, food supply and processing industries) in sustainability transition processes. On the basis of a systematic review of 174 case studies, the paper comes to two conclusions: Firstly, there is a lack of clear definitions and therefore some conceptual confusion regarding the question of what is actually meant by an incumbent. Secondly, the roles of incumbent firms in transition processes are usually heterogeneous, multidimensional, temporally variable and ambiguous in their implications for the transition process. On this basis, the paper makes two conceptual contributions. Firstly, it offers a (new) definition of the term “incumbent firm” that is tailored to transition research and addresses previous conceptual ambiguities. Secondly, it formulates six ideal types of incumbent firms in sustainability transition processes that go beyond dichotomous role attributions and do justice to the ambiguity and temporal dynamics of the activities of incumbents.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101010"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144170552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond temporary measures: How experiential learning in street experiments shapes urban mobility transitions","authors":"Kristen J. Zhao ,&nbsp;Guibo Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tactical urbanism aims to rapidly transform urban environments through iterative experimentation. However, we know little about how learning shapes the long-term effectiveness and transformative potential of these interventions. This paper examines the role of local government implementers’ learning in sustaining tactical urbanism practices, specifically through the lens of street experiments implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using experiential learning theory as a conceptual framework, we conducted and analysed interviews with 40 government representatives associated with 28 street experiments across 21 cities globally. Our analysis reveals three distinct learning processes among the implementers, arranged progressively: (1) implement and execute, (2) experiment and perpetuate, and (3) experiment and conceptualise. While implementers engaging primarily in the first two processes demonstrated responsiveness by leveraging tactical urbanism during systemic disruptions, they rarely generated transferable knowledge or sustained transformative impacts. By contrast, implementers who adopted the third approach – experiment and conceptualise – actively reflected on and generalised their experiences, leading to deeper learning and structural changes. These implementers effectively harnessed street experiments as catalysts for broader urban mobility transitions. By providing empirical evidence from diverse global contexts, this study advances our understanding of how learning processes influence the development of tactical urbanism projects. These insights could assist urban practitioners in seeking to embed meaningful, lasting change in urban mobility through iterative experimentation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101007"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144170553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The potential of international institutions to foster transitions. The example of the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement","authors":"Wolfgang Obergassel ,&nbsp;Christiane Beuermann ,&nbsp;Carsten Elsner ,&nbsp;Heleen de Coninck","doi":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eist.2025.101005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Socio-technical transitions literature has so far engaged very little with the question of how international institutions could foster transitions. Conversely, international climate policy literature shows gaps in engaging with transformational change. To address these gaps, this article analyses the potential of the first Global Stocktake (GST) under the Paris Agreement to foster transitions. The article first develops a novel conceptual framework for how international institutions can promote transitions. On this basis, the article synthesises recommendations for the GST outcome from literature and the GST process and compares them with the actual outcome. The article finds that the GST sent important signals and fostered knowledge and learning on key aspects of low-emission transitions. However, it mostly focused on energy systems and failed to establish mechanisms and resources to promote actual implementation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54294,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions","volume":"57 ","pages":"Article 101005"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144154453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}