Integrating techno-economic, socio-technical and political perspectives on national energy transitions: A meta-theoretical framework
By A. Cherp, V. Vinichenko, J. Jewell, Elina Brutschin, Benjamin Sovacool. 2018
511 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Economic development, technological innovation, and policy change are especially prominent factors shaping energy transitions. Therefore explaining energy transitions requires combining insights from disciplines investigating these factors. The existing literature is not consistent in identifying these disciplines nor proposing how they can be combined. We conceptualize national energy transitions as a co-evolution of three types of systems: energy flows and markets, energy technologies, and energy-related policies. The focus on the three types of systems gives rise to three perspectives on national energy transitions: techno-economic with its roots in energy systems analysis and various domains of economics; socio-technical with its roots in sociology of technology, STS, and evolutionary economics; and political with its roots in political science. We use the three perspectives as an organizing principle to propose a meta-theoretical framework for analyzing national energy transitions. Following Elinor Ostrom's approach, the proposed framework explains national energy transitions through a nested conceptual map of variables and theories. In comparison with the existing meta-theoretical literature, the three perspectives framework elevates the role of political science since policies are likely to be increasingly prominent in shaping 21st century energy transitions.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b6ea52d4f675d54d29a86ddec0b150c6bd023aca
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In Economics and Econometrics
In Global and Planetary Change
In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
- D. V. van Vuuren
- D. P. Vuuren
- Evelina Trutnevyte
- Adam Hawkes
- Nico Bauer
- A. Cherp
- Iain Staffell
- Pierluigi Mancarella
Citations in the corpus
- Societal Transformations in Models for Energy and Climate Policy: The Ambitious Next Step (2019, background): “Social science research, especially in science and technology studies or innovation studies, tends to focus on emerging innovations, be it new technologies, behaviors, or niche players.(8) Models in principle provide attention to all relevant sectors in change given that they describe competition fo”