A low carbon industrial revolution? Insights and challenges from past technological and economic transformations

By P. Pearson, T. Foxon. 2012

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent efforts to promote a transition to a low carbon economy have been influenced by suggestions that a low carbon transition offers challenges and might yield economic benefits comparable to those of the previous industrial revolutions. This paper examines these arguments and the challenges facing a low carbon transition, by drawing on recent thinking on the technological, economic and institutional factors that enabled and sustained the first (British) industrial revolution, and the role of ‘general purpose technologies’ in stimulating and sustaining this and subsequent industrial transformation processes that have contributed to significant macroeconomic gains. These revolutions involved profound, long drawn-out changes in economy, technology and society; and although their energy transitions led to long-run economic benefits, they took many decades to develop. To reap significant long-run economic benefits from a low carbon transition sooner rather than later would require systemic efforts and incentives for low carbon innovation and substitution of high-carbon technologies. We conclude that while achieving a low carbon transition may require societal changes on a scale comparable with those of previous industrial revolutions, this transition does not yet resemble previous industrial revolutions. A successful low carbon transition would, however, amount to a different kind of industrial revolution.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/846aed370040f71be79661c89943126a9682dc2a

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Citations in the corpus

Feasibility of energy justice: Exploring national and local efforts for energy development in Nepal (2017, background): “…of its interlinkages to human behavior (Agyeman and Kolmus, 2002; Dow and Hobman, 2013); to community structures (Islar and Busch, 2016); to political economy of resources (Islar, 2012; Harnesk and Brogaard, 2016); to history (Pearson and Foxon, 2012) and to relations of power (Stirling, 2014).”
Trasformismo or transformation? The global political economy of energy transitions (2018, background): “This approach can build on previous histories of transitions which emphasize factors such as the role of prices, science and human capital (Allen, 2012; Fouquet & Pearson, 2012; Grubler, 2012; Pearson & Foxon, 2012).”
The unstudied barriers to widespread renewable energy deployment: Fossil fuel price responses (2017, background): “Finally, other studies address the interaction between fossil fuel and renewable generation technology from the perspective of technological improvements of the former as a result of competition with the latter; this is known as the ‘Sailing Ship’ effect (Pearson and Foxon, 2012).”
Knowledge sources and impacts on subsequent inventions: Do green technologies differ from non-green ones? (2018, background): “The transition to a greener economy revolves, essentially, around the role of technological change (see, among others, Smith, 2008; Pearson and Foxon, 2012; Barbieri et al., 2016).”
A socio-technical perspective on low carbon investment challenges – Insights for UK energy policy (2015, background): “However, because low carbon investment will need to be policy driven rather than by benefits to private investors, as has historically been the case (Pearson and Foxon, 2012; Perez, 2013), significant uncertainties remain as to how large scale investment which contributes to the societal goal of…”