The EU advances consumer empowerment as one of the pillars of energy legislation, aiming to transfer ownership of the energy transition to citizens. Rights and instruments have been introduced that offer citizens new ways of engaging with energy. However, EU energy legislation lacks a clear conceptual understanding of empowerment, which is required for crafting fit-for-purpose policy measures. We aim to provide a structured overview of current articulations of consumer empowerment in EU energy law by conducting a legislative analysis. To this end, we introduce a framework based on sustainability transitions theory that conceptualises empowerment according to four dimensions: 1) as identity-oriented or centred around resource-mobilisation, 2) more focused on autonomy or power-shift, 3) addressing the general public or specifically marginalised groups within society, and 4) more passive or more active. Application of the framework shows that EU energy legislation recognises consumer empowerment covering all four dimensions, and confirms the legislation’s ambition to provide a comprehensive empowerment agenda for citizens. Nonetheless, our findings also reveal limited reflection on the conceptual implications of such a broad empowerment agenda and the challenge of maintaining policies consistently. By drawing on insights from sustainability transitions we hope to encourage policy makers to strengthen conceptual clarity about the potential role and limitations of consumer empowerment in EU energy legislation. Conversely, we aim to raise awareness among transition scholars of the impacts of legislation on empowerment of actors in the energy transition by connecting legal and sustainability transition perspectives.
Although just transition in coal phase-out has received considerable policy and societal attention, research has yet to explain how it is impeded structurally by interactions among sub-regimes within an incumbent energy system. We investigated how the coal regime structure was stabilized through interactions among the electricity policy, labor market, and affected region sub-regimes. To explore coal regime structure and its potential toward destabilization under the coal phase-out policy and just transition in South Korea, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 representatives, systematically recruited from the coal power industry and its policy sector. Data analysis revealed the following findings. First, the electricity policy sub-regime is characterized by centralized state decision-making and limited proactiveness among public power generation companies. Second, the labor market sub-regime demonstrates uneven employment impacts within a multi-layered structure spanning public power generation companies and subcontractors. Third, the affected region sub-regime plays a limited role in the transition process owing to constrained legal and fiscal autonomy. Our analysis shows that interactions among these sub-regimes mutually reinforce regime lock-in, explaining the slow pace of coal phase-out and persistent tensions for a just transition in South Korea. This framework explains why just transition is difficult to reach when each sub-regime is addressed separately, and their interactions are beyond the scope of analysis, leading to missing the intervention entry for destabilization. By linking regime destabilization theory with just transition imperatives, the sub-regime interaction framework provides a transferable analytical framework for equitable coal phase-out pathways beyond South Korea.
Sustainability Transitions (ST) literature increasingly recognizes the need to better conceptualize agency and power, specifically regarding how actors influence both path dependence and path creation. However, existing perspectives frequently under-theorize how actors actively maintain structural lock-ins or strategically mobilize resources to navigate and disrupt lock-in. To address this theoretical gap, we investigate the mechanisms shaping strategic interactions among stakeholders in the emerging green hydrogen market. We employ Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT) to map structural dependencies and integrate Path Creation (PC) theory to analyze the strategic agency actors exercise within this constrained environment. Based on 25 semi-structured interviews within the Zeeland industrial cluster in the Netherlands, our analysis reveals a central tension between defensive and adaptive action. Defensive action, predominantly deployed by incumbents, relies on discursive delegitimation—e.g., framing policy goals as unattainable due to infrastructural delays—and substantive investments to secure path-extending trajectories (blue hydrogen). Conversely, adaptive action, primarily driven by new entrants and proactive local governments, combines discursive counter-framing of incumbent narratives with substantive institutional entrepreneurship—such as bottom-up rule creation and local de-locking—to accelerate radical path creation of green hydrogen. We contribute to transition literature by demonstrating how actors navigate persistent institutional uncertainty shaped by co-evolving mechanisms of trust and distrust, thereby driving pragmatic responses like hybrid strategies and coopetition.
This paper investigates the roles and evolution of incumbent intermediaries in sustainability transitions, focusing on the World Bank Group (WBG) and its support for renewable energy technologies in developing countries. We propose a framework analyzing how “fitness”—the alignment between technology characteristics, regime conditions, and intermediary structures—shapes patterns of intermediary support. We find that the WBG's success in scaling up support for technologies depends on this alignment, as well as on efforts to improve fitness through knowledge creation, capacity building, and complementary infrastructure investments. The WBG operates across a spectrum of intermediary modes, shifting between them as technologies mature and transition contexts evolve. Aside from acting as an “in-between”, the WBG also engages in “intermediation-by-doing”, deploying financial and technical inputs to generate catalytic effects. Yet technologies that are less commercially viable or which require context-specific adaptation remain under-supported despite potential development benefits. We show that internal change agents can push incumbent intermediaries toward transformation, though the scope of change may be bounded by institutional path dependencies. These findings advance understanding of how incumbent intermediaries in the finance regime navigate diverse transition settings, highlighting that becoming fit for purpose requires adaptive capabilities and the flexibility to shift roles as fitness conditions change.
Living Labs (LLs) have gained prominence in European research and innovation as mission-oriented, place-based approaches for jointly developing solutions to complex agricultural and forestry challenges. Despite this growing institutional momentum, the operational meaning of LLs remains fluid. This paper examines how LLs are operationalised in European agriculture and forestry research by analysing 36 Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects using data from a dedicated questionnaire distributed to project coordinators. Building on contemporary LL theory, we assess whether project-level LLs reflect four core dimensions of the LL approach: (i) aims, (ii) participants, (iii) activities, including co-creation, iteration, experimentation, and evaluation, and (iv) context.Our findings show considerable variability in how LL principles are understood and applied. Most projects articulate innovation-driven aims and involve diverse stakeholders, yet co-creation often remains consultative rather than genuinely collaborative. Iteration is unevenly implemented, and evaluation practices are weak or fragmented. Although real-life experimentation is widely acknowledged, it is frequently delayed by ecological, organisational, or infrastructural constraints. Territorial embeddedness tends to be strong, but long-term sustainability is often not a main concern, with several established LLs lacking strategies for post-project continuity.Overall, LLs appear constrained by structural features of EU research governance, which limit the openness, adaptability, and reflexive learning central to the LL ethos. By systematising current practices and identifying key gaps, this study provides an empirical basis to strengthen conceptual clarity, methodological coherence, and long-term sustainability in the design and implementation of LLs in future European research and innovation programmes.
Participatory processes in the energy transition rarely stay within the boundaries of the meetings, practices, and methods in which they are designed. They interact, accumulate, and resonate within and across institutional, spatial and temporal boundaries. Recent scholarship has begun to recognise this, developing systemic perspectives on participation. While these richly describe what these interactions look like in practice, we require additional conceptual tools for explaining how their adaptive dynamics unfold. This paper addresses this gap by conceptualising a collection of participatory processes as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). We develop a framework that empirically applies CAS concepts – nestedness, coupled fitness landscapes, path dependence and emergence – to a collection of participatory processes in the Netherlands. Our results from 21 interviews show how participatory processes are nested within multiple spatial, temporal, institutional and social scales and domains, both within and beyond the energy sector. Furthermore, participatory processes continuously learn from and respond to each other. We observed an interaction with two main emergent patterns in the system as a whole: the development of a milieu of learning on participation and the institutionalisation of participation. Finally, we observed processes of self-reinforcing behaviour and path dependence. Our CAS perspective provides conceptual and methodological tools to better understand the complexity, interdependencies, and change implications of participatory governance in sustainability transitions. Our findings underline the need for (normative) reflexivity in designing and evaluating participatory processes as dynamic components of larger, evolving systems.
This paper examines how distinct institutional configurations shape divergent automotive decarbonization pathways in advanced economies. Drawing on the multi-level perspective (MLP) and patent-based network analysis, it compares Germany and Japan, two leading automotive producers facing similar global decarbonization pressures but pursuing markedly different transition strategies. Using patent co-classification networks (2012-2023), the study maps the structure and evolution of technological niches and their integration into incumbent socio-technical regimes. The findings reveal two contrasting transition pathways. Germany follows a policy-driven, EU-aligned, substitution-oriented trajectory centered on battery electric vehicles. This pathway is characterized by modular innovation structures and rapid regime destabilization, but is accompanied by heightened risks related to labor adjustment and supply-chain dependence. Japan, by contrast, pursues an industry-led, reconfiguration pathway based on technological diversification across hybrid, battery electric, and fuel-cell vehicles, supported by dense innovation networks and strong state-industry coordination. This pathway prioritizes gradual regime adaptation and transition resilience over rapid substitution. By linking patent network structures to transition pathway dynamics, the paper advances sustainability transitions research in two ways. First, it demonstrates how institutional embeddedness conditions the balance between transition speed and resilience. Second, it shows that technological diversification can function as a stabilizing mechanism in regime transformation rather than a factor of transition delay. The findings underscore the need for context-sensitive transition governance and caution against one-size-fits-all decarbonization strategies in mobility transitions.
Although transitions literature provides ample evidence of how transformative innovations like renewable energies, regenerative agriculture, or multi-modal mobility systems emerge, it offers limited insight into the mechanisms that enable their spatial diffusion. We address this gap by exploring templating, a crucial yet under-theorized pathway through which actors can actively foster the spatial diffusion of transformative innovations. We conceptualize templating as a set of activities through which actors create blueprints, best practices, and standards that provide well-aligned guidance on the implementation of transformative innovations across multiple dimensions (technical, organizational, institutional). Our conceptualization of templating is informed by an in-depth single case study focusing on the increasing diffusion of onsite water reuse systems (ONWS) across the United States. Based on 23 expert interviews and a review of secondary literature, we examine how San Francisco’s public utility established a network of public agencies that subsequently orchestrated a templating process by identifying necessary template elements and mobilizing collaborators capable of developing and showcasing them. We argue that templating is a highly relevant strategy for diffusing complex innovations, with the potential to considerably accelerate sustainability transitions.
Intermediation plays an important role in facilitating adoption of low-carbon technologies, yet less is known about how adopters experience and evaluate intermediation support within complex ecologies of intermediation. This paper examines how specific support attributes shape adopters’ perceived value and satisfaction with intermediation support in residential solar PV adoption in Sweden. Drawing on marketing research, intermediation is conceptualized as a service to adopters. Using structural equation modelling on survey data from 16,888 solar PV adopters, the analysis shows that while several attributes matter for both public and private intermediaries, their relative importance differs. Public intermediaries are valued for what type of support they provide, whereas private intermediaries are more valued for how the support is delivered. These findings introduce a demand-side perspective on ecologies of intermediation and highlight the role of differentiated and complementary intermediation to support both individual decision-making and maintaining momentum for adoption in mature transition contexts.
Whilst sustainability transitions are key in addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, attempts to implement them are often confronted with protest. Despite a rich body of literature around dynamics of transitions, there exists a knowledge gap on how to address this lack of social acceptance and the political response to date is showing a trend of policy dismantling. Current approaches to understand social acceptance of transitions, and the social acceptability evaluation processes behind them, are fragmented and often normative, rooted in predefined moral foundations and prioritised value orientations. Without an integrative framework that integrates this fragmented knowledge and that allows for the inclusion of societal social acceptability evaluations rather than predefined normative criteria, policy makers lack clear guidance on how to govern transitions in a way that increases their social acceptance, beyond watering down transition objectives. Based on literature reviews and empirical data from the English post-Brexit agricultural transition, this article introduces a heuristic, diagnostic, and integrative framework of social acceptability evaluation dimensions within transition governance to support policy makers in their efforts to implement transitions by focusing on the extrinsic social construction processes through which the social acceptance of sustainability transition efforts is negotiated and it provides researchers with a tool around which to anchor examinations of social acceptability evaluations of sustainability transitions.
This paper presents the first systematic review focused on empirical studies of the implementation phase of Transformative Innovation Policies (TIPs), aiming to advance understanding of how these policies unfold in real-world contexts. By jointly analyzing 65 empirical case studies published between 2010 and 2025, the study offers a comparative perspective that moves beyond isolated case analysis and enables the identification of recurring implementation patterns, gaps, and contextual influences. The review reveals a marked geographical concentration of studies in Europe, with limited representation from developing countries, and a relatively balanced distribution across policy sectors. We organized our thematic synthesis around core dimensions of implementation: objectives, stakeholders, instruments, arrangements, mechanisms, logics and contextual conditions. Recurring trends include the prominence of multi-level governance, evolutionary approaches, and the widespread use of public incentives and various policy mixes. In contrast, studies of the participation of civil society actors remain limited across most cases, suggesting a persistent inclusiveness gap. Contextual and geographical factors emerge as relevant variables shaping implementation dynamics. Finally, the research introduces an integrative conceptual framework that organizes the core dimensions of TIP implementation and clarifies how these are intended to advance efficiency and impact. By systematically comparing a large body of empirical evidence, this study extends the current TIP literature and provides an integrative knowledge to support future research and the design of more adaptive and context-sensitive policy implementation strategies.
The transition arena approach is among the prominent approaches for advancing sustainability transitions by bringing together diverse actors to co-create future visions, goals and pathways towards low-carbon change. These arenas engage participants from civil society, policy, technology and business, thereby expanding the circle of individuals who can influence low-carbon policy development. Drawing on the concepts of user representation and imagined publics, we critically examine the outputs of four energy transition arenas regarding the roles envisioned for citizens and the policy measures implicating and targeting them. In the 19 co-created transition pathways, the most frequently proposed policy measures are economic and informational instruments, with the role of citizens predominantly perceived as relatively passive, being most commonly characterised as that of green consumers and information receivers. This leaves the more active citizen roles disconnected from planned policy actions. This finding raises questions about the ability of knowledge co-production to transcend conventional expert-centred conceptions of agency in sustainability transitions. We conclude by outlining directions for strengthening the representation of active citizen roles in future knowledge co-production processes.
Agri-food waste systems (AFWS) play a central role in circular bioeconomy (CBE) transitions, yet remain comparatively understudied in transition studies. Two blind spots persist: the scarcity of empirical work on barriers specific to CBE transitions within AFWS, where existing contributions remain largely sectoral and fail to capture the biophysical and social embeddedness of these systems. And the tendency of geographical approaches to treat space as a pre-given framework, which prevents a full apprehension of the constructed and relational nature of path-dependencies, lock-ins and underlying barriers. Addressing these gaps, this study draws on the territorial transformation framework rooted in French human geography which offers a multidimensional and multi-scalar approach integrating both horizontal stakeholder interactions and vertical dynamics across organizational levels. Applied to the AFWS of Réunion Island through a sample of 32 innovations derived from semi-structured interviews, the study identifies 12 barriers across four dimensions, material, ideal, behavioral, and institutional and three organizational levels, and discusses the broader path-dependencies and lock-ins with which they are associated. Beyond their individual characterization, these barriers reveal that resistance to change emerges from the interplay between historically sedimented structures and distributed agency across multiple dimensions and organizational levels, reflecting the fundamentally political nature of AFWS transitions, where both diffuse and agentive forms of power shape the conditions under which innovations can emerge. While some mechanisms are specific to the case study, the majority reflect structural tendencies likely transferable across territorial contexts, underscoring the analytical value of re-spatializing transition studies within their territorial configuration.
Mission-oriented innovation policies are promoted as a means of tackling wicked societal problems that are contested, complex and uncertain, but it is unclear how policy designs should account for such wickedness. This study illustrates how contestation, complexity and uncertainty can be constructed by actors through policy narratives. As a case, it analyses policy consultation responses to the intractable problem of climate mitigation in agri-food. The results show how actors mobilise complexity narratives highlighting side effects, and uncertainty narratives questioning benefits, to justify contested policy positions. The study argues that constructed wickedness only becomes empirically evident once a diffuse societal challenge is framed as a policy problem, delineating affected actors. Further, the study suggests that appropriate problem and solution framing can help ensure that actor-constructed wickedness contributes to learning in the mission policy process, without paralysing it.
Despite ambitious emission reduction policies, many Dutch citizens remain disconnected from the national energy transition, limiting necessary civic engagement. While effective narration has been shown to matter for public resonance with the energy transition, little research addresses how resonance barriers may be shaped by citizens' own perceptions. To bridge this gap, this qualitative study analyzed value-sensitive interviews with a cross-section of Dutch citizenry. Results revealed four resonance barriers: overly technical language, perceived unfairness in responsibility distribution, inconsistent policy messaging, and skepticism toward renewable technologies. These barriers appeared to reflect tensions between narrative congruence, coherence, narrator trustworthiness, and audience values, particularly universalism, stimulation, security, achievement, and self-direction. Participants proposed simplified language, equitable burdensharing, clear policy directions, and transparent renewable energy evidence as solutions aligned with their values. By highlighting how audience values may shape narrative resonance, this study emphasizes the need for more value-sensitive approaches to communication for supporting public engagement with the energy transition.
Co-creation among cross-sectoral actors offers a promising pathway for fostering collaborative learning and innovation in response to complex societal challenges. While prior research highlights the role of metagovernance in shaping co-creation, it has often focused on the use of discrete governance tools rather than on how these tools operate in combination. This article argues that a key task for metagovernors is to scaffold co-creation through the strategic configuration of complementary and interlocking governance factors that support three dimensions of collaborative learning and innovation: (a) reciprocal knowledge exchange and perspective transformation (input); (b) adaptive responsiveness to emerging needs and feedback (process); and (c) collective ownership and commitment to both the collaborative process and its outcomes (output). Based on a within- and cross-case analysis of four successful co-created sustainability initiatives in Denmark, the United States, Malaysia, and Serbia, we draw the distinction between (1) necessary scaffolding, which provide the baseline support structures for co-creation, and (2) contingent scaffolding, which are situationally activated in response to context-specific challenges. Our findings demonstrate that successful co-creation emerges not from the additive effects of individual governance tools, but from their configurational and mutually reinforcing interaction, through which their combined impact exceeds the sum of their parts.
Island communities are widely recognized as frontrunners in sustainability transitions, often driven by cohesive social networks and a shared aspiration for self-sufficiency. This study investigates the Dutch Wadden island of Ameland, which has devoted considerable efforts toward energy transition initiatives and is now pursuing both heat and circular transition initiatives. The central focus of this research is on understanding higher-order learning-learning that transcends individual transition initiatives and informs broader governance approaches-within and across these successive sustainability transition initiatives. While learning is increasingly acknowledged as vital to transition success, empirical studies rarely examine how insights are transferred between different transition domains. To address this gap, we applied the learning history method, using semi-structured interviews and a focus group with local stakeholders to trace critical learning moments and their influence over time. Our findings reveal that Ameland's transition initiatives are shaped by the capacity of its governance network to engage in reflective, trial-anderror learning and to absorb and apply new knowledge across contexts. However, we also observe a persistent tendency to rely on established routines, which may constrain adaptive capacity in the face of novel challenges. Our study highlights the importance of fostering higher-order learning processes and dynamic governance structures to support effective multi-domain sustainability transition initiatives.
Research on urban transitions views urban system reconfiguration as a gradual, incremental process in which new arrangements among existing systems and new components yield novel relationships. This focus on relational dynamics calls for greater attention to actors and agency in transition processes. Nonetheless, most existing studies have concentrated on human agency. This article aims to expand the understanding of non-human agency in shaping urban transitions. We cross-fertilise two perspectives within sustainability transitions research: urban system reconfiguration and Actor Network Theory-inspired analyses of transitions-in-the-making. Specifically, we investigate niche-regime interactions within an actor-network formed during a collaborative pilot project testing mobility hubs in a Stockholm suburb, Sweden. Using qualitative data, we examine the actor-network by tracking human and non-human actants and their interactions throughout the project's lifecycle-from inception to disassembly. The analysis reveals that an ANT lens grounded in flat ontology effectively uncovers the diversity of actants and relationships in emerging networks and demonstrates the multidirectional influence between niche and regime. This flat ontology challenges traditional ideas of agency and structure, emphasizing the role of non-human actants alongside humans in driving action. Findings also highlight the importance of fluidity, heterogeneity and the density of associations among actants beyond project limits for broader governance reconfigurations. The focus on materiality and inscription illustrates how non-human actants facilitate the development of networks and connections across multiple niches and regimes.
This study develops a prospective, actor-centered framework for early-stage policy mix analysis that combines actor-centered sources (stakeholder documents, responses to public consultations, and expert interviews) with institutional sources such as policy reports and legal texts. This framework is applied to the EU policy mix for chemical recycling (CR), an emerging and contested technology within the circular plastics transition. The analysis identifies four overarching strategies and five central instruments as the core elements of the policy mix. It maps the main conflict lines that constitute actor contestation by comparing patterns of core (strategy-level) and secondary (instrument-level) preferences. From these patterns, two competing actor-envisioned policy mix pathways are derived: one emphasizing regulatory alignment to accelerate CR deployment, and another advocating a more cautious approach based on regulatory safeguards. Finally, the study argues for a dedicated EU strategy for CR and outlines implications for transition scholars studying contested, early-stage policy mixes.
This study quantifies two contrasting global sustainability scenarios-FST1: Greener Growth and FST5: Sufficiency Economies-using the MORDRED model. While both pursue high decarbonization without speculative technologies, they embody distinct paradigms: FST1 prioritizes green growth, whereas FST5 centers on sufficiency, redistribution, and well-being within ecological limits. Simulations generate demographic, economic, and biophysical trajectories that complement their qualitative storylines, enabling a plausibility assessment. Results show FST1 achieves rapid technological decarbonization, with a 75% reduction in GHG emissions per unit of output by 2100 and an 83% increase in output over the same period. However, resource and land scarcity constrain growth during the simulation, while existing structural inequalities remain largely unaddressed. As a result, per-capita consumption in the center averages three times that of the periphery, and international climate goals are not achieved, with warming reaching 2.6 degrees C by 2100. In contrast, FST5 achieves strong convergence in consumption-at & euro;7500 (2019 constant prices)-and mortality rates across regions and classes, stabilizing warming at 1.9 degrees C by 2100 while reducing material and water extraction and pressures on land systems. At the same time, strong decarbonization increases the renewable sector's share of global resource extraction. Both scenarios appear stable beyond the qualitative storyline's end in 2075, although FST1 ' s greater environmental pressure and inequality pose long-term stability risks. Sensitivity analyses show that plausibility depends on assumptions about climate sensitivity and land and labor productivity growth. This study underscores the value of integrating qualitative narratives with quantitative modeling and highlights that sufficiency-oriented transitions may offer more robust sustainability outcomes.
