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Chair of Sustainability Transition Policy
At the Chair of Sustainability Transition Policy, we explore the policies needed for a transition to a climate-neutral future. Our work is rooted in transition studies, but is strongly interdisciplinary, building on theories and methods from different disciplines, including political science, economics and other social sciences.
Our focus lies on climate and energy policies, often with an empirical focus, both in research and teaching.
In the RadioEins science programme "Die Profis", Johan Lilliestam was interviewed about myths and realities around challenges in the ongoing expansion of wind power. You can listen to the interview here (in German, until January 2026): https://shorturl.at/tlkpd.
The main task of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to provide comprehensive assessments of climate science, including climate policy options, holistically and objectively. We analyse the sources of all climate policy-related statements in the IPCC reports and Summaries for Policymakers since 1990 to investigate the influence of Integrated Assessment Models, a particular type of climate-economic model. We show that although both reports and SPM are broad and diverse, IAMs are strongly overrepresented in the evidence presented: IAMs are cited at least 10 times more often in the reports than their share of the scientific climate policy literature, and 20 times for often in the politically influential Summaries for Policymakers.
Wind power is an essential pillar of the current and future electricity system, but resistance is growing – and much of it based on false claims, such as wind power driving the whales crazy (Trump) or the Alternative für Deutschland wanting to tear down “wind mills of shame”.
We took stock of the current state of the art of wind power, assessing current challenges and the knowledge and experience about solutions. We show that many claims are false, such as infrasound generation, others are true but have effective and often tested solutions, such as bird and bat protection measures. The present main challenges include too low electricity prices caused by abundant productions, and excessively long permission processes for new wind farms. The article can be read for free here, and is summarised as a research highlight here.
We are offering 6 courses in WS 2024/2025. All are relevant to “Sustainability Transitions” which is our core interest.
Master courses
Climate Policy, first class Monday 21October, 13:00-14:45, in Lange Gasse LG 5.155
Energy Policy Instruments, first class Tuesday 22 October, 13:00-17:00, Lange Gasse LG 3.154
Project course: Building Sustainable Industry in Europe, first class Friday 18 October, 9:00-16:30, in Findelgasse FG 2.024
Energy Transition Analysis: Bridging Techno-economic, Business, and Policy Perspectives, first class Wednesday 16 October, 09:45-13:00, in Findelgasse FG 3.023
Master & Bachelor course
Thesis Seminar Sustainable Transition Policy, first class Friday 18 October, 09:00-14:00, Zoom
Bachelor course
Energy Security, first class Thursday 17 October, 13:15-16:45 in in Findelgasse FG 1.036
For the full details and link to the StudOn pages: https://www.transitionpolicy.rw.fau.de/teaching/courses/
In the last months, the STP group published a set of new scientific papers (check out all of them here)!
In the field of transition studies, we published an article in Environmental Innovations & Societal Transitions about the political interaction of technologies, showing empirically how the tremendous success of one solar power technology (photovoltaics) effectively killed another solar technology (concentrating solar thermal power).
We further explored the perception of the energy transition in several European countries, asking citizens not whether they would like a particular scenario, but rather asking them: if you got to decide, how would you want to design the electricity future? We show, in a paper in iScience, that citizens prefer decentralised electricity supply, based on solar photovoltaics rather than wind, with as small imports as possible - especially if the costs are low. We're currently exploring the technical feasibilty of this: is it at all possible to design a power system satisfying such citizen preferences? Stay tuned for more!
We also pushed the transiton studies agenda by diving deeper into the issue of sociotechnical tipping points, asking whether sociotechnical systems tip (spoiler: yes they do (paper in press, appearing soon) - for example we do not use horses but cars for personal transport today, so that system DID tip at some point) and how we can predict that. We showed that political visions are essential for such tipping, illustrating it with the cases of the transition away from coal in Duisburg and Essen (in Global Environmental Change). Further thinking about tipping points in social tipping points can be found in two chapters (on coal and on the concept of tipping) in a recently published book.