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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Feiz, Roozbeh, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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Biogas Potential for Improved Sustainability in Guangzhou, China : A Study Focusing on Food Waste on Xiaoguwei Island
- 2019
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI. - 2071-1050. ; 11:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As a result of rapid development in China and the growth of megacities, large amounts of organic wastes are generated within relatively small areas. Part of these wastes can be used to produce biogas, not only to reduce waste-related problems, but also to provide renewable energy, recycle nutrients, and lower greenhouse gases and air polluting emissions. This article is focused on the conditions for biogas solutions in Guangzhou. It is based on a transdisciplinary project that integrates several approaches, for example, literature studies and lab analysis of food waste to estimate the food waste potential, interviews to learn about the socio-technical context and conditions, and life-cycle assessment to investigate the performance of different waste management scenarios involving biogas production. Xiaoguwei Island, with a population of about 250,000 people, was chosen as the area of study. The results show that there are significant food waste potentials on the island, and that all studied scenarios could contribute to a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Several socio-technical barriers were identified, but it is expected that the forthcoming regulatory changes help to overcome some of them.
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| 4. |
- Koehler, Jonathan, et al.
(författare)
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An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. - : Elsevier BV. - 2210-4224 .- 2210-4232. ; 31, s. 1-32
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies. The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Niskanen, Johan, 1984-
(författare)
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Mainstreaming passive houses : A study of energy efficient residential buildings in Sweden
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The passive house concept has become increasingly popular in the building sector in the lost twenty years ond is deemed to ploy on important role in aligning the housing sector with climate and environmental policy objectives. However, for such buildings to ploy this port they need to be more widespread, more common and more accepted by mainstream actors and institutions. The deployment of passive houses involves changes and adaptations in different parts of society. It involves changes in institutional and organisational set-ups, and it involves market and regulatory changes. Previous research on passive houses has focused on demonstration projects or has taken for granted that a dissemination will lead to a full-scale transition of the building sector. This puts undue focus on emerging actors and technologies emerging in isolation. This thesis investigates the wider deployment of passive houses with a focus on mainstreaming. This means that focus is on different social arenas where the deployment of passive houses is negotiated between multiple actors. This thesis contributes to a comprehensive picture of how passive house deployment is shaped through a study of attempts to mainstream these buildings in Sweden. It shows how such attempts hove been partially successful in specific companies and regions, but it also show how a normalization of these buildings has been limited due to market, regulatory, and political developments
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| 7. |
- Parks, Darcy, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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From sustainable to smart : Re-branding or re-assembling urban energy infrastructure?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 100, s. 51-59
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Visions of sustainable cities have increasingly been substituted by the ambition to become a ‘smart city’ in recent years. Ongoing scholarly discussions often focus on how sustainability and ‘smartness’ relate to each other conceptually, to which extent smart city technologies contribute to making cities more sustainable, and calls to prioritise social issues over technology. The questions of how this ‘shift to smart’ has unfolded, and how it has reshaped strategies and interventions to make cities and their energy infrastructures more sustainable, have however been much less investigated. The aim of this article is to zoom in on the dynamics of such a shift from sustainable to smart. The cities of Malmö and Graz have strong profiles as sustainable cities and have both begun to use smart city branding. We build our analysis on argumentative discourse theory and the concept of socio-material assemblages. Along with a discursive shift from sustainable cities to smart cities, we also observe changes in institutions and socio-material practices. We identify appropriation and colonisation as two dynamics that characterise the relations between assemblages of sustainable and smart cities. We conclude that even when smart city discourses are appropriated by actors in existing sustainable city assemblages, the discursive shift might eventually allow smart city assemblages to colonise existing institutions and socio-material practices. But the shift does not take place through explicit controversy between two discourse coalitions, and it therefore remains important to further investigate the conditions that allow for a change in dynamics from appropriation to colonisation.
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| 8. |
- Parks, Darcy, 1986-
(författare)
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The Sustainable City Becomes Climate-Smart : How Smart City Ideas Reshape Urban Environmental Governance
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The idea of smart cities has become enormously popular during the past decade. Environmental governance is one issue in which smart city ideas seem to hold potential. However, there is an incredible variety in what it means for a city to be ‘smart’. For some, it involves the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to solve problems; for others, it has more to do with economic growth and city branding. Many social science researchers have criticised the idea of smart cities. They worry that it might allow multinational corporations to take control of municipal governance and lead to an undue focus on technological solutions to societal issues. However, only a few previous studies have examined the influence on urban environmental governance in practice. This thesis investigates the influence of smart city ideas on urban environmental governance through a study of Hyllie, a climate-smart city district in Malmö, Sweden. It applies a theoretical perspective based on science and technology studies and the concept of assemblage. It combines participant-observation of inter-organisational meetings, interviews with professionals and document analysis. This thesis contributes a more comprehensive picture of which actors influence the direction of the climate-smart city—beyond the usual suspects of municipal governments and multinational companies. Still, it shows how ICT-based smart city solutions have taken precedence in urban environmental governance at the expense of energy efficiency and renewable energy.
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| 9. |
- Rohracher, Harald, 1965-
(författare)
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Analyzing the Socio-Technical Transformation of Energy Systems : The Concept of 'Sustainability Transitions'
- 2018
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Ingår i: Oxford Handbook of Energy and Society. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780190633851 ; , s. 45-60
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dealing with the immense societal challenges of climate change and resource depletion requires no less than a fundamental transformation of the energy system, comprising not only technological change, but also cultures of energy use and consumption, new regulations, and new types of actors operating on the energy market. A growing field of interdisciplinary social science research on “sustainability transitions” deals with the dynamics and governance of such transformative, systemic, and socio-technical change processes toward sustainability. This chapter gives an overview of concepts used to study energy system transitions, their strengths and shortcomings, as well as new advancements. The chapter also discusses a concrete example of socio-technical change in the field of renewable energy—wind power—and reflects on some of the lessons that can be drawn from this about the interdependence of energy and society and for an understanding of transitions toward a more sustainable energy system.
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| 11. |
- Rohracher, Harald, et al.
(författare)
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Households as infrastructure junctions in urban sustainability transitions: The case of hot water metering
- 2019
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Ingår i: Urban Studies. - : SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD. - 0042-0980 .- 1360-063X. ; 56:11, s. 2372-2386
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The integration of infrastructure domains and resource flows such as electricity, heat, water and waste increasingly gains currency in strategies to achieve more resource-efficient, smart and resilient cities. While widely discussed concepts of a nexus of resource systems, such as energy-water-food, aim at a more optimised and integrative management of resource flows, this article investigates how infrastructure integration is accomplished through the establishment of new interfaces and junctions between formerly separated systems. In particular, it focuses on households as an arena where different urban infrastructures intersect and different kinds of sometimes contradicting demands are imposed to co-manage these infrastructures, such as in the case of own electricity generation from photovoltaics along with the charging of electric cars and the management of household energy consumption. The installation of meters and the constant monitoring of resource use and consumption feedback to household members is regarded as a crucial element in such a transition towards more sustainable urban infrastructures. Empirically, the article studies the introduction of hot tap water meters in urban households in Sweden and the resistance and reactions of these households to such a metering regime. Our study shows how meters as new junctions between energy suppliers and users but also between separate infrastructures of electricity, hot tap water and room heating become contested political terrains which are linked to broader socio-political questions of urban change. In contrast to system management perspectives, such an inside-out approach rather lends itself to context-sensitive and navigational governance approaches of infrastructure integration.
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Rohracher, Harald, 1965-
(författare)
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Science and Technology Studies, History of
- 2015. - 2nd
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Ingår i: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. - Oxford : Elsevier. - 9780080970875 ; , s. 200-205
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS) has only emerged in the late 1970s but has been influenced by various lines of thought in sociology, philosophy, and economics. At its basis is the claim that not only the social institution of science or the impact of technological change on society is open to social analysis but also the very content of science and engineering, i.e., scientific facts and technological objects. This article sketches out the development of STS from its roots, among others in the sociology of knowledge and history of technology, to contemporary issues such as the problem of expertise and transformations in the production of knowledge.
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| 14. |
- Rohracher, Harald, 1965-, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainable innovation as a challenge for urban governance
- 2019
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Ingår i: Handbook of Sustainable Innovation. - Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing. - 9781788112567 - 9781788112574 ; , s. 268-280
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As cities increasingly turn into key players of climate change mitigation, urban innovations for sustainability move to the centre of interest. A general characteristic of such innovations is that they aim at the systemic transformation of socio-technical configurations and infrastructures in cities towards more sustainability. The proximity and high density of interconnections in cities are conducive to innovations reaching across infrastructure sectors, such as the integration of electric vehicles in smart electricity grids. Urban initiatives to generate sustainable innovations are often framed as ‘urban laboratories’ or set up as sustainable model districts focusing e.g. on car free living or the increased integration of ICT in smart city districts. In this chapter we will work out the characteristics of transformative urban sustainability innovations and emphasise some of the challenges of governing sustainable urban change. As an empirical illustration we will discuss the development of a Smart City district in Vienna.
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| 15. |
- Späth, Philipp, et al.
(författare)
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Conflicting strategies towards sustainable heating at an urban junction of heat infrastructure and building standards
- 2015
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Ingår i: Energy Policy. - : Elsevier. - 0301-4215 .- 1873-6777. ; 78, s. 273-280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Approaches to ‘sustainability transitions’ stress the possibility of aligning actors around a shared vision of the future, e.g. at the scale of a city. Empirical accounts reveal how difficult such coordination often is due to contradictory views involved. How can we better understand related processes of searching and negotiation? What does this mean for the organization of decision making processes regarding long-term infrastructural change? We analyze a conflict which erupted in Freiburg, Germany when two strategies of reducing environmental impacts of space heating were to be applied in the Vauban ‘model district’: A) Efficient co-generation of heat and power (CHP) combined with district heating systems (DHS), and B) Reducing heat demand by low-energy designs and ambitious energy standards (‘passive house standard’). In order to understand the politics of infrastructure development, we unravel 1) enabling factors and driving forces of the conflict, 2) normative content of opposing viewpoints, 3) resources tapped into for settling the disagreement, and 4) the institutional setup of such decision making about energy policy priorities in the municipality. We reflect on implications of such a perspective on how policies and how governance arrangements should ideally be shaped and take a brief outlook on further research needed.
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| 16. |
- Späth, Philipp, et al.
(författare)
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Incumbent Actors as Niche Agents: The German Car Industry and the Taming of the “Stuttgart E-Mobility Region”
- 2016
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 8:3, s. 252-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The system of mobility currently faces severe challenges. Particularly in cities, strategic interventions are made to support a transition towards sustainable mobility. Incumbent actors from the car industry are often invited to play a key role in such initiatives. The Stuttgart region is supported with public money to become a model region of sustainable mobility because it is base to key actors of the German car industry. This paper examines the locus of agency in such a “transition arena”. How do key actors frame the challenge of sustainable mobility? What role is attributed to public policy at various governance levels and to the “local” industry, respectively? In the case of the Stuttgart region, we find a high ability of key industry actors to reframe transition initiatives for sustainable mobility and align public policy with their interests—particularly in local, i.e., place-bound contexts. This underlines the need for transition studies to pay more attention to the agency of incumbent actors and their capacity to absorb sustainable alternatives without changing dominant industry structures.
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| 17. |
- Turnheim, Bruno, et al.
(författare)
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Challenges ahead : understanding, assessing, anticipating and governing foreseeable societal tensions to support accelerated low-carbon transitions in Europe
- 2018
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Ingår i: Advancing energy policy. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783319990965 - 9783319990972 ; , s. 145-161
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Addressing global climate change calls for rapid, large-scale deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs). Such an accelerated diffusion constitutes a new phenomenon, which challenges existing analytical approaches. The implied fundamental reconfiguration of energy systems will inevitably involve adjoining shifts in the structure of energy markets, the socio-cultural significance of energy, and related rules and institutions - producing new societal tensions that are largely understudied. This think piece draws on insights from socio-technical, social-ecological and techno-economic systems studies to better understand, assess and support the exploration of low-carbon futures. We sketch out an integrated approach that encompasses four major tasks for governing the energy transition: i) a richer understanding of the dynamics of socio-technical and social-ecological systems; ii) multi-dimensional assessments of prospective environmental, social and economic impacts of these transformations; iii) methods that enable actors to anticipate future impacts in their everyday innovation and decision practices; and iv) elaborate new, integrated governance arrangements to tackle the upcoming transformations.
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| 18. |
- Ulsrud, Kirsten, et al.
(författare)
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Pathways to electricity for all : What makes village-scale solar power successful?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Science. - : Elsevier. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 44, s. 32-40
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article presents new empirical research on what it takes to provide enduring access to affordable, reliable and useful electricity services for all. We analyze and synthesize the long-term experiences with three different systems for village-scale solar power supply in India, Senegal and Kenya. Since this scale of electricity provision forms part of village infrastructure, it requires particular types of knowledge, policies and support mechanisms. This research therefore investigates how village-scale solar systems can be designed, implemented, sustained and replicated in ways that make them accessible and useful for the community members. Drawing on a socio-technical and practice-oriented approach, we show that the electricity system’s degree of adaptedness to its social context affects many important qualities of the system such as the relevance of the available electricity services for the people, the system’soperational and economic sustainability and the potential for replication. Achieving such adaptation notably requires a flexible approach on the part of implementers, funders and local actors before, during and after implementation. We also show the need for institutionalization of decentralized electricity provision, discuss the current ambiguities in policies, regulations and funding mechanisms for village-scale solar power, and provide recommendations to policy makers and donors.
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| 19. |
- Ulsrud, Kirsten, et al.
(författare)
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Spatial transfer of innovations: South-South learning on village-scale solar power supply between India and Kenya
- 2018
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Ingår i: Energy Policy. - : Elsevier. - 0301-4215 .- 1873-6777. ; 114, s. 89-97
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article presents research on the transfer of sustainable energy innovations between countries of the global South from a socio-technical perspective. The analysis identifies factors important for how a deliberate transfer process may unfold. It is based on monitoring a case of South-South transfer of experiences with village-level solar power supply models from India to Kenya. This research shows that it is not so much stable technical solutions which travel between different spatial and cultural contexts, but that experiences with sustainable technologies in one country can provide important inspiration and knowledge for the development of new socio-technical designs based on local needs in a new socio-spatial context in a different country. Such learning processes can be especially effective between countries with similar problem situations, such as poverty and lacking access to electricity in rural areas. To achieve a successful transfer, strong emphasis must be put on mutual learning and exchange of knowledge, socio-technical experimentation, adaptation and social embedding. Learning from promising, innovative infrastructures in other geographical areas needs to capture the micro-level interactions between people, technology and socio-cultural contexts, while also taking into account larger processes of system innovation and emerging transitions.
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| 20. |
- Ulsrud, Kirsten, et al.
(författare)
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Village-level solar power in Africa : Accelerating access to electricity services through a socio-technical design in Kenya
- 2015
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Sciences. - : Elsevier. - 2214-6296. ; 5, s. 34-44
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Village-level solar power supply represents a promising potential for access to electricity services. Increased knowledge is needed for the development of solutions that work for the users and are viable in the long run. This article analyzes a solar power model developed and tested through action research in collaboration between a community in Kenya and a team of social scientists and technical experts. The analysis includes the reasons for its socio-technical design, and the actual functioning of the model. The research shows that an energy center model can cover basic electricity needs in areas with dispersed settlement patterns, where mini-grid based systems as well as conventional grid extension meet significant challenges. Such areas are representative for large geographical areas in Africa. We show that portable lanterns and low prices may enhance access to suitable services. Committed follow-up of the local actors, and a flexible socio-technical design – allowing for improvements after implementation – contribute to economic sustainability and smooth functioning. Close attention to the socio-cultural context and the challenges of users, operators and managers is required. Our research draws on theories of socio-technical change and users’ innovation, and presents a five-step analytical framework for analysis of village-level power provision.
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| 21. |
- Wallsten, Anna
(författare)
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Assembling the Smart Grid : On the Mobilization of Imaginaries, Users and Materialities in a Swedish Demonstration Project
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Influential actors refer to smart grids as a revamped version of the energy systemwhen they argue for alternative energy pathways, and assign demonstration projects with the task of turning prospects about the future into functional configurations. This thesis explores notions of the smart grid future that are implicitly conveyed in Swedish smart grid strategy and planning documents. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse how a smart grid is assembled in a Swedish demonstration project. Inspired by Science and Technology Studies (STS), it explores this process through interviews, document studies and participant observation. By combining concepts such as sociotechnical imaginaries, material participation and translations, this study sheds light on the negotiations, tensions and struggles at play in the process of making smart grids functional. This study examines how included and excluded users make sense of the smart grid and of their own role in shaping the future. What imaginaries do the actors involved in the project draw on? What materialities take part in shaping the smart grid, and what user engagements are encouraged? The aim of the study is to seek an enhanced understanding of how smart grids are made, of the different forces that shape this process and, ultimately, of the reality of Swedish households as part of a smart grid in the making. This study shows that making a smart grid functional is not as feasible as the smart grid imaginaries suggest, and it finds potential in user engagements that are suppressed within the current market regime, which is primarily arranged around economic incentives.
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