Niche protection in transitions to sustainability

1. Niche protection in transitions to sustainability • Towards a theory of • niche protection • EnPath Seminar on • Change and Stability in Energy Systems • SYKE, Helsinki, 15-11-2010 Rob Raven (TU/e)

2. Overview • Introduction and background • Starting point: transitions perspective/SNM • Protection: multi-functional • Protection: multi-dimensional • Protection: a political perspective • Research design

3. Introduction ‘Green power is as expensive as gray power’ (NRC; June 12, 2010)

4. Line of reasoning • Netherlands is lagging behind, but still good opportunities (off-shore wind and solar) • Need for: • Stable supportive environment (e.g. German feed-in system) • Removal of support for fossil energy • Institutional changes (grid-connection rules; local/municipal energy cooperatives) • Renewable energy niches are still on a learning curve  less support needed in the future • Niches are likely to compete as well as collaborate for public and other non-market support

5. Conclusion “The choice for green or grey is no longer an economic but a political one”

6. Background • New 3-year research project funded by ESRC/NWO (SPRU, Tue – October 2010 – 2013) • Basic idea: temporary (and dynamic) ‘protective space’ is a central concept in niche theory (and contemporary policies), but we now little about: • what it consists of empirically • how it is built up, and then withdrawn • what the relation is between protection and the development of socio-technical practice within the niche • who is involved in protection and how

7. Niches in a transitions perspective Geels 2004

8. A sustainability transitions problem framing From: incrementally innovating ‘regimes’ of socio-technical practices (enduring trajectories, yet troubling /destabilising) Towards: radically more environmentally sustainable and socially just regimes. Path-breaking innovations originate in niche settings that provide a ‘protective space’ where some regime-derived selection processes do not operate Regime selection environments / processes are multi-dimensional: Evolutionary economics Socio-technical transitions - socio-cognitive / heuristics - institutions - markets - infrastructures - institutions? - users - cultural associations - policy How does ‘protective space’ permit path-breaking novelties to flourish; and how does it contribute to systems innovation?

9. SNM • Background • Evolutionary theories (quasi-evolutionary) • Constructivist methodology in Science and Technology Studies (STS) • Argument: • Many radical environmental innovations never make it to the market, because of adverse selection environment (regime). • Protected spaces (niches) are critical in pre-competitive development - until the niche practice either becomes competitive in existing markets or helps influence changes to markets

10. Experiments • Niches do not pre-exist, waiting to be filled, but rather they materialise as the result of social action • ‘Experiments’ as main vehicle for niche creation and development (bridging variation and selection) • “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, 2009) • Key processes: articulating new expectations, networking and learning

11. From experiments to niche Geels and Raven, 2006 Raven et al, 2008

12. Redefining niches? • Early niche studies: • Protected spaces were empirically defined in terms of public financial resources and protective expectations • Later niche studies: • Protected spaces are conceptually defined as emerging socio-institutional environments (proto-regimes) • In neither case is protection scrutinised systematicaly • How does ‘protective space’ permit path-breaking novelties to flourish; and how does it contribute to systems innovation?

13. Protection: shielding, nurtering, empowering • B. Nurturing niche development: • expectations • networks • - learning • C. Empowering the niche: • mutual identities • niche interests • challenge and reform regime Protective space A. Shielding - alternative selection criteria: - socio-cognitive / heuristics - markets - institutions - infrastructures - users - cultural associations - policy after Geels and Raven, 2006; Markard and Truffer, 2008

14. Protection: fit, capture, stretch Protection removed as niche adapts and becomes competitive under regime selection pressures (fitting) Protection is perpetuated by beneficiaries, so little pressure to continue innovating (capture) Protection institutionalised as part of a new regime largely based on innovative sustainability practices in the niche (stretching) Infant industries Protectionism Sustainability transitions

15. Protection is multi-dimensional • Economic protection: most common notion. Subsidies, investment grants and so on. • Institutional protection: alterations to norms and rules. E.g. temporarily suspending normal rules for grid connection • Socio-cognitive protection: supporting new knowledge production. E.g. handbooks, best practice publications, R&D investments.

16. Protection is multi-dimensional • Political protection: technologies become part of political agenda’s, e.g. the green economy • Geographical protection: certain geographical locations provide specific resources or conditions for experimentation. E.g. depleting oil and gas wells in the Netherlands • Cultural protection: mobilising wider cultural notions. E.g. large-scale innovationis resonate with engineering identities and business cultures in modern societies

17. Protection is multi-dimensional

18. Piecemeal protection and niche development Regime t3 Regime t2 Regime t1 Geographic Cultural Cultural Cultural actual expected unrealised Economic Socio-cognitive Socio-cognitive Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Mobilising protections from the regime and against the regime

19. Protection: multi-dimensional • How do these protections interrelate? • Some are ‘given’/prior; others are actively built up; all are socially constructed? • How do combinations help or hinder the development of greener socio-technical practices? • How do protections become ‘normal practice’ (e.g. privileges enjoyed by regimes, such as coal subsidies) • How do niche advocates mobilise and draw upon protective resources? How do advocates shape protections? • What drives the dynamics of these protective processes over time?

20. The politics of protection • Tendency to treat niche theory as a singularly rational and consensual processes that achieves social learning • Yet as more and more political and economic attention and public resources are committed to low carbon transitions, so a growing variety of technology advocates will lobby for those resources, and try and realise their own interests in lower carbon ways • How to study the politics of niche protection?

21. Protective space through networks and narratives • Starting point: follow heterogenous networks of niche advocates through time (‘global networks’; Law and Callon, 1994) • When and which protections do they mobilise (process reconstruction)? • How are they mobilised? • Political/discursive analysis • How do (references to) protections enter niche narratives, for what audiences and with which interests? • How do the resulting global network structures and narratives shape socio-technical experimentation in local projects and vica versa?

22. Research design NL UK

23. Discussion? Can we really distinguish empirically different dimensions of protection? Can we really distinguish empirically global from local networks? How? !? Which methods are best here? www.lowcarbonpolitics.org