Experimenting for sustainability in India & Thailand

A system innovation perspective on sustainable electricity and

mobility initiatives

Rob Raven (TU/e)

Overview• Introduction and background

• Conventional development paradigm

• Starting point: experiments/SNM

• Challanges to transition perspective

• Programme design

Introduction

Launch of Indian solar mission: 20000 MW in 2022Currently: 11 MW

Discourse• National action plan on climate change

(2008)

• Need for an energy-efficient economy based on renewables rather than fossil

• India is a tropical country (lot’s of sunshine)

• Potential for rural development

• But solar is expensive; need for innovation

Discourse“Transforming India into a solar energy hub would include a leadership role in low-cost,

high quality solar manufacturing”

“Solar energy can be the next scientific and technological frontier in India after atomic energy, space and information technology”

“We will need to create many solar valleys along the lines of the silicon valleys that are

spurring our IT industry”

More than a discourse• Unprecedented scale and pace of economic,

industrial, social, political and environmental transformation (Rock and Angel, 2005)

• Environmental improvements happen sooner, faster and more simultaneous (Marcotullio et al, 2005; 2007)

• Evidence that there are many “sustainability experiments” in various sectors and developing Asian countries (Berkhout et al, 2009)

• Yet they have not in any significant way influenced dominant trends towards unsustainability (Esty et al, 2005)

More than a discourse

2 MW solar plant , West Bengal

500 kW biomass gasifier, Sunderban

Experimental biodiesel plant, Maharashtra

Background• New 4-year research programme funded by NWO-WOTRO

(TUe, IVM, Jadavpur University, Chiang Mai University – starts in fall 2010 – 4 PhDs; 1 Post-doc)

• Basic idea: conventional growth perspectives fail to explain sufficiently current sustainability dynamics in Asia

• How can we assess the value of the current wave of experiments?

• What roles do they play in ongoing Asian transitions?

• How can their potential be fostered and strengthened?

• Theoretical ambitions:

• How do these dynamics challenge transition theories?

• What contributions can transition studies make to development theories?

Conventional paradigm

• Developed countries (US, Europe, Japan) are in the technological frontier

• Technology creates comparative economic advantage

• Best development strategy: catch-up with ‘known’ technological frontier

• Technology transfer, imitation, technological learning, capacity building, convergence

Limitations• Too much emphasis on universal development

pathways (Oyelaran and Rasiah, 2009; Hobday, 2003)

• Too much focus on technologies and technological learning (Nelson, 2004)

• Too much focus on economic development rather than holistic development (Loomis, 2000)

• Catch-up creates risk of fossil-fuel lock-in (Unruh, 2000)

• Catch-up paradigm aggregates marginal, but potentially rich experiences away into meso- and macro-level statistics (Loomis, 2000; Donaldson, 2008)

Transitions perspective

Geels 2004

Potential contribution to development studies

• Explicitly acknowledges and investigates variety of pathways (Geels and Schot, 2007; Smith et al, 2005)

• Holistic approach (market, industry, technology, policy, culture, science)

• Explicitly acknowledge (and promotes) learning from variety in experiments (Hoogma et al, 2002; Raven, 2005). Compare: Romijn et al (2010).

Experiments• ‘Experiments’ as critical arena for developing

alternative pathways – but in tandem with regime destabilisation and mobilising landscape pressures

• “Initiatives that embody a highly-novel socio-technical configuration likely to lead to substantial sustainability gains and hold a promise for radical, system-level change” (Berkhout et al, 2010)

What experiments can do• Provoking actors to articulate and negotiate

their expectations and interests (in relation to wider regime problems and landscape pressures)

• Shared, tangible and specific expectations

• Establishing and strengthening new social networks

• Heterogenous and dense networks

• Stimulating a good learning process

• Holistic and reflexive learning

From experiments to niche

Geels and Raven, 2006Raven et al, 2008

Challenges to transition theory• Highly dynamic nature of, and diversity in regimes

• A heterogeneous patchwork of technologies, institutions and practices rather than a homogenous entity

• Variety = ample opportunities for innovation?

• Ex-ante analysis of sustainability impact of experiments and pathways

• Multi-criteria mapping (Stirling, 1999; McDowall and Eames, 2007)

• Disclose variety in values to enrich debates rather than premature closure by finding ‘optimal solution’

Challenges to transition theory• Transnational nature of experiments, niches, regimes,

landscapes

• International financing institutions and foreign direct investments

• Multi-national business and international knowledge flows

• Role of politics, conflicts and power

• Poverty reduction vs. environmental development

• Rural vs. urban

• ‘Politics of low-carbon innovation’ (www.lowcarbonpolitics.org)

Program design

• Two sectors in two countries (PhD projects)

• Electricity experiments in India (TU/e)

• Mobility experiments in India (Jadavpur)

• Electricity experiments in Thailand (Chiang Mai Uni)

• Mobility experiments in Thailand (TU/e)

• Post-doc project (IVM):

• Literature review and developing new methods

• Cross-case analysis, theory development, meta-questions

• Interacting with policy and practitioner domain

Programme design

• Stage 1: Inventorying and mapping experiments

• Stage 2: Analysis of transformative potential of selected experiments (SNM)

• Stage 3: Multi-criteria mapping analysis

• Stage 4: Regime and landscape analysis

• Stage 5: Development of 2-3 alternative pathways

• Stage 6: Comparative analysis

Discussion?

Can we really ex-ante assess transition potential of experiments?

What can policy makers learn? Or another audience? !?

Which methods are best here?

See also recent special issues in:

Technological Forecasting & Social Change 76 (Edited by Berkhout, Angel & Wieczorek)

Environmental Science & Policy 13 (Edited by Berkhout, Verbong & Wieczorek)