Frank W. Geels - Böcker

Is the automobility regime experiencing a transition towards sustainability? To answer that question, this book investigates stability and change in contemporary transport systems. It makes a socio-technical analysis of transport systems, exploring the strategies and beliefs of crucial actors such as car manufacturers, local and national governments, citizens, car drivers, transport planners and civil society. Two guiding questions are: Will we see a greening of cars, based on technological innovations that sustain the existing car-based system? Or is something more radical desirable and likely, such as the development of travel regimes in which car use is less dominant?

This book is intended for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners interested in the dynamics and governance of low-carbon transitions. Drawing on the Multi-Level Perspective, it develops a whole system reconfiguration approach that explains how the incorporation of multiple innovations can cumulatively reconfigure existing systems. The book focuses on UK electricity, heat, and mobility systems, and it systematically analyses interactions between radical niche-innovations and existing (sub)systems across techno-economic, policy, and actor dimensions in the past three decades. Comparative analysis explains why the unfolding low-carbon transitions in these three systems vary in speed, scope, and depth. It evaluates to what degree these transitions qualify as Great Reconfigurations and assesses the future potential for, and barriers to, deeper low-carbon system transitions. Generalising across these systems, broader lessons are developed about the roles of incumbent firms, governance and politics, user engagement, wider public, and civil society organisations. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Is the automobility regime experiencing a transition towards sustainability? To answer that question, this book investigates stability and change in contemporary transport systems. It makes a socio-technical analysis of transport systems, exploring the strategies and beliefs of crucial actors such as car manufacturers, local and national governments, citizens, car drivers, transport planners and civil society. Two guiding questions are: Will we see a greening of cars, based on technological innovations that sustain the existing car-based system? Or is something more radical desirable and likely, such as the development of travel regimes in which car use is less dominant?

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive academic and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas.Frank W. Geels provides an insightful and evidenced introduction to one of the most important and dynamic topics in contemporary debates on how to address grand challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.This book outlines current theories and research avenues in the rapidly growing field of sustainability transitions. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies, it emphasises the role of green innovations in relation to business, user, political, and cultural contexts in situated energy, mobility, and food systems. To capture this, the book shows how insights from mainstream disciplines have been integrated into the multi-level perspective, which has become the field’s central middle-range conceptual framework.Written in an accessible style, this Advanced Introduction is vital for students and scholars of development economics, innovation, environmental politics and policy, sustainability studies and human geography.Key Features:Interdisciplinary in scopeDiscusses essential characteristics, theories, frameworks and actors of sustainability transitionsCovers topics including incumbent firm resistance and reorientation, the role of the state, policy instrument mixes and policymaking processes, social justice, grassroots innovation, consumption, emerging economies and geopolitics

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive academic and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas.Frank W. Geels provides an insightful and evidenced introduction to one of the most important and dynamic topics in contemporary debates on how to address grand challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.This book outlines current theories and research avenues in the rapidly growing field of sustainability transitions. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies, it emphasises the role of green innovations in relation to business, user, political, and cultural contexts in situated energy, mobility, and food systems. To capture this, the book shows how insights from mainstream disciplines have been integrated into the multi-level perspective, which has become the field’s central middle-range conceptual framework.Written in an accessible style, this Advanced Introduction is vital for students and scholars of development economics, innovation, environmental politics and policy, sustainability studies and human geography.Key Features:Interdisciplinary in scopeDiscusses essential characteristics, theories, frameworks and actors of sustainability transitionsCovers topics including incumbent firm resistance and reorientation, the role of the state, policy instrument mixes and policymaking processes, social justice, grassroots innovation, consumption, emerging economies and geopolitics

Modern societies face several structural problems such as transport congestion and greenhouse gas emissions due to the widespread use of fossil fuels. To address these important societal problems and achieve sustainability in the broad sense, major transformations are required, but this poses an enormous challenge given the complexity of the processes involved. Such transformations are called 'transitions' or 'system innovations' and involve changes in a variety of elements, including technology, regulation, user practices and markets, cultural meaning and infrastructure.This book considers two main questions: how do system innovations or transitions come about and how can they be influenced by different actors, in particular by governments. The authors identify the theories which can be used to conceptualise the dynamics of system innovations and discuss the weaknesses in these theories. They also look at the lessons which can be learned from historical examples of transitions, and highlight the instruments and policy tools which can be used to stimulate future system innovations towards sustainability. The expert contributors address these questions using insights from a variety of different disciplines including innovation studies, evolutionary economics, the sociology of technology, environmental analysis and governance studies. The book concludes with an extensive summary of the results and practical suggestions for future research. This important new volume offers an interdisciplinary assessment of how and why system innovations occur. It will engage and inform academics and researchers interested in transitions towards sustainability, and will also be highly relevant for policymakers concerned with environmental issues, structural change and radical innovation.