Suchergebnisse

The rapid global deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies since the early 2000s has attracted sustained attention. Solar PV has become an increasingly established, widespread and flexible form of electricity generation. In the research language of socio-technical or energy transitions, solar PV can reasonably be viewed as acquiring the characteristics of a 'socio-technical regime.' Such regimes are found where a co-evolving set of social and technical developments have built sufficient momentum for a particular technology to become accepted as an established part of the energy provision system. As solar PV becomes integrated into the project of providing secure, affordable and sustainable energy for development, this momentum is now spreading across sub-Saharan Africa. In this article, we examine the emergence and adoption of solar PV in Mozambique and South Africa. While solar PV has gained ground in both cases, it has done so in different ways and with varying consequences. Our analysis suggests that even as niche technologies reach maturity and transcend the contexts from which they have emerged, they remain constituted through multiple sets of relations that are continually remade, such that the geographies, histories and politics of transitions are an ongoing project. Such a perspective, drawing on energy geographies and landscape studies, can enrich the sustainability transitions literature, enhancing our understanding of different ways of developing and adopting solar PV in particular places.

"For over a decade climate change has been considered one of the most significant political issues facing the international community. In order to address this challenge, attention needs to be focused not only at the international level of treaties and conventions, but also on how climate protection policy is taking shape at the local level. Germany and the UK have been leading countries for international action on climate change. However, the reductions in domestic emissions of greenhouse gas emissions achieved benefited in both countries from specific circumstances. This report details the national climate change policy, the structure of local governments, their competencies and powers, the institutionalisation of local climate change policy, the most important spheres of action and the different roles played by municipalities in local climate protection policy in both countries. Despite the formal differences in the system of local government in Germany and the UK, the spheres of action as well as the roles of municipalities in local climate protection show clear tendencies towards convergence. The challenges in addressing greenhouse gas emissions from the transport and planning sectors have meant that in both countries attention has focused on the energy sector as the primary arena for local policy and local action. At the same time new governance forms dominate the roles taken by local governments with respect to climate protection. The role taken by local governments in Germany is becoming more 'enabling', and hence like the UK. The convergence between the two countries can be explained by internal (national) as well as external (European) factors. First, it is evident that the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of German municipalities has been reduced considerably by their decreasing and inadequate financial resources, while UK local authorities have the potential to gain more autonomy. Second, British municipalities are mandated by the national government to take local climate and energy policy more seriously. Therefore, they have caught up with German municipalities, which are engaged in climate protection policy only on a voluntary basis. Third, the increasing European integration has significant impacts on local climate protection policy. The liberalisation of the energy and transport markets changed the German situation so that it is more akin to the UK situation, where many services are no longer provided by the municipalities themselves. The increasing convergence of both countries in the area of local climate protection suggests that there is considerable scope for experimentation with new policy instruments and for cross-national learning at the local level between German and British municipalities." (author's abstract)

"The title examines, informs and advances the governance of sustainability transitions through urban living labs (ULL). ULL are increasing across the globe as a means by which actors are testing innovations in buildings, transport and energy systems. The book draws together researchers within a systematic comparative framework for evaluating the design, practices and processes of ULL to enable the analysis of their potential and limits. It provides new insights into the governance of urban sustainability and seeks to improve the design and implementation of ULL in order to realise their potential"--

Design of ULL -- Urban living labs : catalysing low carbon and sustainable cities in Europe? / Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, Kes Mccormick and James Evans -- Putting urban experiments into context : integrating urban living labs and city-regional priorities / Mike Hodson, James Evans and Gabriele Schliwa -- Urban living labs for the smart grid : experimentation, governmentality, and urban energy transitions / Anthony M. Levenda -- Smart city construction : towards an analytical framework for urban living labs -- Practices of ULL -- Intermediation and learning in Stellenbosch's urban living lab / Megan Davies and Mark Swilling -- Bringing urban living labs to communities : enabling processes of transformation / Janice Astbury and Harriet Bulkeley -- Homelabs : domestic living laboratories under conditions of austerity / Anna Davies -- Urban living labs, smart innovation and the realities of every day access to energy / Vanesa Castán Broto -- Processes of ULL -- 15-years and still living : the basel pilot region laboratory and Switzerland's pursuit of a 2000-watt society gregory trencher / Achim Geissler, Yasuhiro Yamanaka -- Agency, space, and partnerships : exploring key dimensions of urban living labs in Vancouver, Canada / Sarah Burch, Alex Graham and Carrie Mitchell -- Placing sustainability in communities : emerging urban living labs in China / Qianqing Mai -- The importance of place for urban transition experiments : understanding the embeddedness of urban living labs / Frank Van Steenbergen and Niki Frantzeskaki.

In a world in which rising powers are reconfiguring global development trajectories with significant implications for their sustainability, it becomes increasingly important to understand whether and how low carbon energy transitions might be enabled or frustrated by this new global geography of power. Towards this end, this paper makes the case for bringing together insights from three broad sets of literature on: (1) socio-technical transitions; (2) the rising powers as (re)emerging development donors and; (3) energy geographies. In building bridges between these three bodies of scholarship we seek to develop an alternative analytical framework that attends more effectively to the global and domestic political economy of transitions and whose value is illustrated empirically in relation to the growing involvement of Brazil, India and China in the energy systems of Mozambique and South Africa. We argue that this alternative framework provides a better understanding of how the rising powers are influencing the changing relationships between low carbon and fossil-fuel based energy pathways and of the multiple roles they are playing in the development and transformation of energy systems, through the development of 'niches' where innovation can emerge, or in reinforcing or challenging existing 'regimes' or dominant ways of providing energy services.

The notion that pathways can be identified and followed towards more sustainable futures has become an increasingly prevalent idea across the science and policy of global environmental change. Focusing on the debate within literatures on socio-technical systems, we find that pathways are often tied to the concept of scaling up such that they are dependent on trajectories which extend from the geographically small to large scale or from singular incidences to widespread adoption. Building on relational approaches to scaling, in this paper we argue that sustainability pathways need to be conceived as emerging from the catalytic interaction of multiple and overlapping efforts to change the status quo. We suggest that pathways can be conceptualized as being composed of 'stepping stones': bundles of related interventions that seize or create opportunities to build momentum for the implementation of innovations, the form of which is not predetermined. Drawing on 243 interviews, participant observation, and document analysis examining urban nature-based solutions across six European countries and the EU, we identify 20 stepping stones that can be used to accelerate the uptake of urban NBS in European cities. In the case of urban NBS in Europe, we find that the capacity of stepping stones to generate catalytic change strongly depends on how they interact with one another. We illustrate that pathways are not given but rather assembled through key interventions that collectively generate the capacities and momentum needed to overcome inertia and generate new socio-material orders in which such interventions are normalized as mainstream responses to sustainability challenges.

There is a strong sense of malaise surrounding climate politics today. This has been created at least in part by factors such as the chasm between the scale of action required and the adequacy of current political commitments, stalemate in global negotiations, the low price of carbon, and a growing sense of indifference among the publics of some developed countries about the threat posed by climate change. Within the policy community these issues are generally treated as different problems each to be overcome on their own terms. Yet, we argue, suggested solutions to these problems hold much in common—namely a focus on identifying agency, whether the capacity of institutions to act or the behavior of individuals. What is often missing from such accounts of climate politics is a recognition that the problems of how agency is attributed, what we might term governance traps, are structural in nature. Governing climate change therefore requires that we study the conditions through which these challenges arise and which in turn serve to frame agency in particular ways. We suggest that examining the ways in which notions of responsibilities and rights are currently being framed within climate politics provides one way into these dynamics. This opens up the critical questions that need to be addressed ahead of the critical Conference of the Parties meeting in Paris in November 2015

"Based on an interdisciplinary investigation of future visions, scenarios, and case-studies of low carbon innovation taking place across economic domains, Decarbonising Economies analyses the ways in which questions of agency, power, geography and materiality shape the conditions of possibility for a low carbon future. It explores how and why the challenge of changing our economies are variously ascribed to a lack of finance, a lack of technology, a lack of policy and a lack of public engagement, and shows how the realities constraining change are more fundamentally tied to the inertia of our existing high carbon society and limited visions for what a future low carbon world might become. Through showcasing the first seeds of innovation seeking to enable transformative change, Decarbonising Economies will also chart a course for future research and policy action towards our climate goals. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core."

With this paper we present an analysis of sixty transnational governance initiatives and assess the implications for our understanding of the roles of public and private actors, the legitimacy of governance 'beyond' the state, and the North–South dimensions of governing climate change. In the first part of the paper we examine the notion of transnational governance and its applicability in the climate change arena, reflecting on the history and emergence of transnational governance initiatives in this issue area and key areas of debate. In the second part of the paper we present the findings from the database and its analysis. Focusing on three core issues, the roles of public and private actors in governing transnationally, the functions that such initiatives perform, and the ways in which accountability for governing global environmental issues might be achieved, we suggest that significant distinctions are emerging in the universe of transnational climate governance which may have considerable implications for the governing of global environmental issues. In conclusion, we reflect on these findings and the subsequent consequences for the governance of climate change.