Integrated transitions toward sustainability: The case of water and energy policies in Israel

Transition Management literature has examined how long-term transitions could be directed toward greater sustainability. However, it has mostly taken a sectoral approach which neglects the potential relationships between environmental changes and policy dynamics in different sectors. This paper examines parallel and interrelated dynamics in the Israeli water and energy sectors by combining insights from the literature on policy dynamics, transition management, co-evolution, and policy integration. The developed approach examines how sectoral transitions may be coupled and technological regimes may co-evolve. Israel has battled water, energy and other scarcities from its formation. Consecutive dry years, the loss of stream flows, salinization of the coastal aquifer, and severe pollution are problems facing water managers, while air pollution, imported fossil fuels and carbon emissions are salient energy issues. Water and energy sectors are both in transition because earlier policies have resulted in socially-induced scarcity, degradation of environmental assets and loss of adaptive capacity to respond to future challenges. Current approaches to water and energy scarcities have evolved around technological configurations which emphasize traditional supply side solutions such as seawater desalination and additional power plants. They may be difficult to change without explicit integrative transitions management.     

Permit markets,carbon prices and the creation of innovation clusters

Innovation clusters combining public and private effort to develop breakthrough technologies promise greater technological advances to slow down climate change. We use a multi-country model with an emission trading system to examine whether and how international climate policy can incentivize countries to create such innovation clusters. We find that a minimal carbon price is needed to attract applied research firms, but countries may nevertheless fail to invest in complementary research infrastructure. We construct a mechanism that leads to innovation clusters when emissions targets are set before uncertainty surrounding technological developments is resolved. It is a combination of low permit endowments for the country with the lowest costs to build the needed infrastructure, compensation for this country by profits from permit trade, and maximal possible permit endowments for the remaining countries. We outline how the EU-ETS can be further refined according to this mechanism.     

Developing transition pathways for a low carbon electricity system in the UK

This paper describes the approach to developing transition pathways for a low carbon electricity system in the UK, being pursued in a major new inter-disciplinary research project. The project aims (a) to learn from past transitions to help explore future transitions and what might enable or avoid them; (b) to design and evaluate transition pathways towards alternative socio-technical energy systems and infrastructures for a low carbon future; and (c) to understand and, where appropriate, model the changing roles, influences and opportunities of large and small ‘actors’ in the dynamics of transitions. The paper describes the approach, which builds on the work of Dutch researchers on transitions and transition management using a multi-level framework of niches, socio-technical regime and landscape, as well as on other parts of the innovation systems literature. It also describes its application to several outline transition pathways to a low carbon energy system in the UK. The pathways embrace both the evolution of the physical and institutional infrastructure changes and the roles of both large actors, e.g. multinational energy supply and distribution companies, national governments, major investors, and small actors, e.g. households, innovators and entrepreneurs.     

Major transitions in ‘big’ history

‘Big’ history treats events between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth as a single narrative, suggesting that cosmological, biological and social processes can be treated similarly. An obvious trend in big history is the development of increasingly complex systems. This implies that the degree to which historical systems have deviated from thermodynamic equilibrium has increased over time. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This paper argues that significant macro-historical events can therefore be characterized as transitions to steady states exhibiting persistently higher levels of thermodynamic disequilibrium which result in observably novel kinds or levels of organisation. Further, non-equilibrium thermodynamics suggests that such transitions should have particular temporal structures, beginning with sustainable energy innovations which result in novelties in organisation and in control mechanisms for maintaining the new organisation against energy fluctuations. We show how events in big history which qualify as historically significant by these criteria exhibit this internal structure. Big history thus obeys law-like processes, resulting in a common pattern of major transitions between steady-state historical regimes. This common process from cosmological to contemporary times makes big history a viable and relevant field of scientific study.     

Density and Integration Effects on Class I U.S. Freight Railroads

We investigate some technological aspects of railroading relevant to the debate on open access by estimating a multiproduct cost function with both operational outputs and infrastructure maintenance outputs. We find strong cost complementarities among operational outputs, but not between operations and infrastructure. The latter result implies that at the levels of output that characterize freight rail operations in the U.S. there may be no inherent technological advantages from vertical integration. The former suggests though (for reasons that we develop below) that competitive access alone will not necessarily lead to competitive outcomes in rail freight markets.     

Interaction patterns of systemic problems in distributed energy technology diffusion: a case study of photovoltaics in the Western Cape province of South Africa

ABSTRACT

Compared to large-scale renewable energy systems, distributed systems have diffused relatively slowly in recent years, particularly in developing countries. In this study, we analysed the barriers to the diffusion of distributed photovoltaics in South Africa by applying the technological innovation system framework. More specifically, we carried out an interview-based structural-functional analysis to identify underlying systemic problems, reveal their patterns of interaction, and analyse the implications of these patterns for the relationship among the key processes within the innovation system, the so-called system functions. We identified a variety of interlinked problems, shed light on the specific roles of different, mal-performing, system functions, and revealed constellations where specific functions blocked each other and, thereby, created lock-in situations. Although the findings reveal the complexity of the problems that are associated with the implementation of distributed energy technologies, they also indicate that these problems may be addressed successfully.     

Initial infrastructure development strategies for the transition to sustainable mobility

Within the Dutch transition policy framework, the transition to hydrogen-based transport is seen as a promising option towards a sustainable transport system. One aspect of such transition processes that is emphasized in transition management is learning about user behaviour and preferences. However, while earlier research on sustainable mobility acknowledges the importance of refuelling infrastructure, the question of how to unroll such an infrastructure and the role of user practices and user behaviour largely remains unanswered. In this paper we present an agent-based model to study the process of development from niche to market for hydrogen vehicles. We thereby focus on the role of users in this process and support our model by empirical data. Within this model the effects of different strategies for hydrogen infrastructure development on hydrogen vehicle fleet penetration are studied. More specifically, diffusion patterns for hydrogen vehicles are created through the interactions of consumers, refuelling stations and technological learning. The main result is that social network effects do influence the technological trajectory of hydrogen vehicles and thus should be taken into account by infrastructure developers and policymakers.     

农村基础设施公共投资与农业增长——基于省际面板数据的例证

农业增长离不开生产要素投入的增加和农村基础设施的完善。由于农村基础设施具有技术不可分性、低排他性、不可贸易性等特征,因而应当主要由政府的公共投资来提供。运用1994—2009年期间中国各省、市、自治区的面板数据,通过模型的比较分析,发现耕地投入和农业劳动力投入是不断递减的,但由于农业经营制度变革、公共投资增多、农业技术进步导致劳动生产率提高等原因,农业总产值仍稳步提升。农田水利灌溉、农业科研、农村教育和农村电力等方面的公共投资都能推动农业增长,但由于各项投资的边际影响不同,需要在不同地区有所侧重。研究还发现,农村基础设施公共投资能够明显缩小西部地区与中东部地区的农业发展差距,促进区域经济协调可持续发展。     

Analysis of barriers in the transition toward sustainable mobility in the Netherlands

The transition toward a sustainable transportation system in the Netherlands takes place in the context of the Dutch “Transition management policy framework”. We study four technological routes that the “Platform Sustainable Mobility” has selected for this goal: (1) hybridization of vehicles, (2) liquid biofuels, (3) natural gas as a transportation fuel and (4) hydrogen as a transportation fuel. These technological routes all envision large-scale changes in vehicle propulsion technology and fuel infrastructure. Furthermore, they compete for the scarce resources available to invest in new (fuel) infrastructures, which implicates that these ‘transition paths’ are also interdependent at the level of the mobility system. The main outcome of the analysis is the identification of barriers that are currently blocking the transition toward sustainable mobility. Barriers are classified as being related to (1) technology and vehicle development, (2) the availability of (fuel) infrastructures, and (3) elements of the institutional infrastructure. The transition management framework currently misses guidelines for coping with (competing) technologies that each require large infrastructural investments. We further argue that avoiding undesired lock-ins and creating a beneficial institutional context for sustainable mobility cannot be pursued at the transition path level. Therefore, we recommend that a more systemic approach should be taken to the transition to sustainable mobility, in which the interdependencies between the transition paths are critically assessed and in which the possibilities to legitimize sustainable mobility as a whole should be used.     

Energy, property, and the industrial revolution narrative

The Industrial Revolution (IR) story is the core of a mainstream economic history narrative of energy/development relationships, celebrating Modern Economic Growth (MEG) as the increase in per capita energy consumption in the last two centuries. Such a narrative emphasizes mineral technology and private property as the key elements of growth processes. I will criticize the above narrative, from a socio-environmental history perspective, for its inability to account for two crucial aspects of energy history: 1. the role of social power as key determinant in how energy sources are used and to what ends; 2. the socio-ecological costs associated with the increase of energy consumption. I will then review Environmental History studies on energy/industrialization and highlight possible future developments in the field. The article makes a strong point for the need to look at energy transitions as social processes, and to include the unequal distribution of environmental, health, and social costs of mineral energy into global history narratives.     

Fuzzy evaluations applied in analysis of infrastructure development based on national competitiveness perspectives

Policy makers often need to determine which key projects should be prioritised for national infrastructure investment. In this light, this research uses the evaluating indicators for infrastructure as found in the World Competitiveness Yearbook and proposes a leading and lagging fuzzy score graphics-based model to achieve the following objectives: a) distinguish the leading and lagging degree of each indicator more accurately; b) assist policy makers to find out the strongest and the (relatively) weakest infrastructure items and c) highlight the key fields of national infrastructure that need improvement. Taiwan is used as a case study to test the viability of the model proposed. We show how this methodology will help policy makers to determine the key issues requiring improvement towards the national infrastructure system.     

A rigorous periodization of ‘big’ history

‘Big’ history is the time between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth. The stretch of big history can be considered as a series of developments in systems that manage ever-greater levels of energy flow, or thermodynamic disequilibrium. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Major transitions in big history can therefore be rigorously defined as transitions between non-equilibrium thermodynamic steady-states (or NESSTs). The time between NESSTs represents a historical period, while larger categories of time can be identified by empirically discovering breaks in the rate of change in processes underlying macrohistorical trends among qualities of NESSTs. Two levels of periodization can be identified through this procedure. First, there are two major eons: cosmological and terrestrial, which exhibit qualitatively different kinds of historical scaling laws with respect to NESST duration and the gaps between NESSTs: the first eon decelerating, the second accelerating. Accelerating rates of historical change are achieved during the Terrestrial Eon by the invention of information inheritance processes. Second, eras can also be defined within Earth history by differences in the scaling of energy flow improvement per NESST. This is because each era is based on a different kind of energy source: the material era depends on nuclear fusion, the biological era on metabolism, the cultural era on tools, and the technological era on machines. Periodizing big history allows historians to uncover the mechanisms which trigger the innovations and novel organisations that spur thermodynamic transitions, as well as the mechanisms which keep historical processes under control.     

社会—技术系统可持续转型阻力及治理研究——基于利基保护空间思路

可持续转型研究是一个发展迅速的新领域,旨在解释社会-技术系统转型如何发生以及如何治理，其理论影响日益显著。然而，当前实践表明，以能源、交通为代表的系统转型进程依然相当缓慢，因此厘清转型进程中的阻力具有重要意义。归纳分析系统转型的基本要求以及转型动态过程和机制，从产业结构、基础设施、知识基础、市场和消费需求结构、公共政策与政治力量及社会认知6个方面分析社会-技术系统中现行非持续体制，对新的可持续技术利基发展和转型进程构成阻力。在现行技术体制稳定情况下，加速转型进程必须扶持技术利基成长，从防护、培育、赋能3个方面建立和强化利基保护空间功能,突破体制路径依赖。最后，从“谁治理、治理什么、如何治理”3个问题切入，提出在利基保护空间动态发展过程中，政策制定者需要以治理思维推进其战略管理。     

社会—技术系统可持续转型阻力及治理研究——基于利基保护空间思路

可持续转型研究是一个发展迅速的新领域,旨在解释社会-技术系统转型如何发生以及如何治理，其理论影响日益显著。然而，当前实践表明，以能源、交通为代表的系统转型进程依然相当缓慢，因此厘清转型进程中的阻力具有重要意义。归纳分析系统转型的基本要求以及转型动态过程和机制，从产业结构、基础设施、知识基础、市场和消费需求结构、公共政策与政治力量及社会认知6个方面分析社会-技术系统中现行非持续体制，对新的可持续技术利基发展和转型进程构成阻力。在现行技术体制稳定情况下，加速转型进程必须扶持技术利基成长，从防护、培育、赋能3个方面建立和强化利基保护空间功能,突破体制路径依赖。最后，从“谁治理、治理什么、如何治理”3个问题切入，提出在利基保护空间动态发展过程中，政策制定者需要以治理思维推进其战略管理。     

A hard slog, not a leap frog: Globalization and sustainability transitions in developing Asia

How does globalization influence transitions toward more sustainable socio-technical regimes in the developing world? This paper argues that transformations of regimes, the networks and institutions governing technological and environmental practices in an industry, can be positively influenced by globalization but it depends on how global forces interact with local socio-political landscapes—the political-economic institutions, values, and regulations broadly guiding an economy and its relationship to the environment. We evaluate these relationships through a comparison of two kinds of socio-political landscapes—the neo-liberal export-led development model commonly found in the developing world and the uniquely Asian capitalist developmental state. We first show how the neo-liberal model overemphasizes the power of market forces to facilitate upgrading and more sustainable industrialization. We then argue that capitalist developmental states in East and Southeast Asia have been better able to harness global economic forces for technological and sustainability transitions through an openness to trade and investment and effective public-private institutions able to link cleaner technologies and environmental standards to production activities in firms. We buttress this argument with firm-level evidence showing the evolution of socio-technical regimes in two industries—cement and electronics. The case studies demonstrate how interactions with OECD firms can contribute to environmental technique effects provided the socio-political landscape is amenable to changes in an industry's regime. Ultimately, we find the process of transition to be complex and contingent; a hard slog not a leap frog toward a potentially more sustainable future. We close by considering the limitations on the capitalist developmental state model and with comments about what else needs to be learned about globalization's role in sustainability transitions.     

The dynamics of transitions in socio-technical systems: A multi-level analysis of the transition pathway from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles (1860-1930)

This article investigates transitions at the level of societal functions (e.g. transport, communication, housing). Societal functions are fulfilled by socio-technical systems, which consist of a cluster of aligned elements, e.g. artefacts, knowledge, user practices and markets, regulation, cultural meaning, infrastructure, maintenance networks and supply networks. To understand how transitions from one socio-technical system to another come about, the article describes a conceptual multi-level perspective. The perspective is illustrated with a historical case study: the transition from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles in the USA (1860-1930). The case study shows that technological substitution approaches to this transition are too simple, because they neglect the electric tram and bicycle, which acted as important stepping stones. The case study also corrects another mistake, namely that the gasoline car won by chance from steam and electric automobiles. It will be shown that particular niches played a crucial role in this competition, as well as the wider socio-technical context. The case study deviates on three points from the multi-level perspective. These deviations are used to conceptualize a particular transition pathway, called 'de-alignment and re-alignment'.     

新能源企业技术创新效率及收敛性研究

发展新能源产业是国家提高环保能力的重要举措,新能源企业是实施相应战略的载体。基于2014—2018年78家新能源企业面板数据,采用DEA—RAM模型对其技术创新效率进行测量,并应用经济收敛理论,分析新能源企业技术创新效率的收敛性。结果表明：新能源企业技术创新效率水平不高,三大区域间差异明显,整体仍具有较大发展空间;全国以及东部地区新能源企业技术创新效率δ收敛性不显著,但存在绝对β收敛及条件β收敛;中部地区新能源企业技术创新效率δ收敛性以及绝对β收敛性并不显著,而条件β收敛性显著;西部地区新能源企业δ、绝对β以及条件β收敛性均不显著。最后,从提升新能源企业投入水平、提高新能源企业产出质量、适度提升新能源企业规模、优化新能源企业股权集中度等方面,提出提升新能源企业技术创新效率实际增长率的建议。     

Models in evolutionary economics and environmental policy: Towards an evolutionary environmental economics

In this paper we review evolutionary economic modelling in relation to environmental policy. We discuss three areas in which evolutionary economic models have a particularly high added value for environmental policy-making: the double externality problem, technological transitions and consumer demand. We explore the possibilities to apply evolutionary economic models in environmental policy assessment, including the opportunities for making policy-making endogenous to environmental innovation. We end with a critical discussion of the challenges that remain.     

我国能源消费存在的主要问题及对策分析

本文分析了我国能源消费具有消费结构以煤炭为主、能源价格改革滞后和能源金融市场发展不足的特点，能源消费存在对环境污染严重、能源利用效率较低和能源技术创新不足的问题。文章最后提出了提高能源使用效率、鼓励能源技术创新的途径和对策。     

复杂创新阶段性特征及其价值创造机理研究综述

运用CiteSpace软件对国内外技术创新价值创造机理最新研究内容进行聚焦分析,探讨了国内外在技术创新价值创造领域的研究热点和研究特征,论述了复杂创新背景下技术创新理论在研究内容、创新主体、创新模式、关键因素等方面的阶段性特征,探讨了技术创新在价值创造理论发展中的基础性地位,总结了技术创新价值创造机理3条研究路径及其背后的价值基础,可为我国技术创新实践和技术创新价值创造理论提供借鉴。