ABSTRACT

The Energy Transition, the inevitable shift away from cheap, centralized, largely fossil-based energy systems, is one of the core challenges of our time. This book provides a coherent and novel insight into the nature of this challenge and possible strategies to accelerate and guide such transitions. It brings together prominent European scholars and practitioners from the fields of energy transition research and governance to draw attention to the current complex dynamics in the energy domain, and offer elegant and provocative explanations for current crises and lock-ins. They identify multiple energy transition pathways that emerge and increasingly compete, and emphasize the need and possibilities for novel governance. By analysing the complexity of energy transition processes and the difficulties in shifting to sustainable pathways, this text questions the extent to which actually governing energy transitions is already reality, just an illusion, or a bare necessity.

chapter 1|23 pages

Introduction

chapter 3|24 pages

Energy Transitions in Practice

The Case of Global Indoor Climate Change

chapter 4|26 pages

Resisting Change?

The Transnational Dynamics of European Energy Regimes

chapter 5|24 pages

Carbon Capture and Storage

Sustainable Solution or Reinforced Carbon Lock-In?

chapter 6|27 pages

Analyzing Emerging Sustainable Energy Niches in Europe

A Strategic Niche Management Perspective

chapter 7|28 pages

Motors of Sustainable Innovation

Understanding Transitions from a Technological Innovation System's Perspective

chapter 9|17 pages

Future Electricity Systems

Visions, Scenarios and Transition Pathways

chapter 11|26 pages

Working in the Science-Policy Interface

Transition Monitoring in the Dutch Energy Transition Program

chapter 13|21 pages

Energy Governance in the European Union

Enabling Conditions for a Low Carbon Transition?

chapter 14|19 pages

Conclusion

Is Governance of the Energy Transition a Reality, an Illusion or a Necessity?