Allgemein

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.

The exam review for International Politics II will take place on 22 October at 10.00-11.30 in room LG 0.224. Please send a mail to Johan Lilliestam to register for this in advance.

Starting in winter semester 2023, the Sustainability Transition Policy chair will start explore and teach how transitions to a climate-neutral future can happen, and particularly the role of governments and public policies in guiding transitions. Stay tuned - more news, results, and a quickly gr...