Ambitious government and utility targets for renewable energy as part of a ‘low carbon transition’ mean that the winds and waves of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland have a new found value. The region is becoming a site for large renewable energy projects, as well as opening up opportunities for local communities to develop … Continue reading »
Filed under Academic papers …
Journal article: Connecting regimes and practices in innovation for sustainability
The multilevel perspective and social practice theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of sociotechnical change. The relationship between these two different camps has, on occasions, been antagonistic, but we argue that they are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, through empirical analysis of two different case studies of sustainability innovation, we show that … Continue reading »
Book chapter: Exploring niche development processes among community energy initiatives
Sabine Hielscher, Gill Seyfang and Adrian Smith from the CISE project have a chapter in a new book on Innovations in Sustainable Consumption. Hielscher, S., Seyfang, G. and Smith, A. (2013) ‘Grassroots Innovations for Sustainable Energy: Exploring niche development processes among community energy initiatives’ in Cohen, M., Brown, H. and Vergragt, P. (eds)Innovations in Sustainable … Continue reading »
Journal article: Mapping community currencies for sustainable development
Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth, and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems. These parallel systems of exchange (or community currencies) are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development, … Continue reading »
Working Paper: Community Energy in the UK
A new working paper presents results of our survey of community energy projects in the UK. Our survey investigates the objectives, origins and development of these groups across the UK, their activities and their networking activities as a sector. We also examine the strengths and weaknesses of these groups, along with the opportunities and threats presented by wider socioeconomic and political contexts, in order to improve understanding of the sector’s potential and the challenges it faces. Continue reading »
Working Paper: Grassroots Innovations for Sustainability: a niche analysis of community currencies
A new working paper presents a niche analysis of community currencies for sustainability. Over the last decade, the nascent field of Sustainability Transitions has sought to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’. Building on this pioneering work, recent … Continue reading »
Journal article: creating spaces for sustainable innovation
Journal paper: Growing Grassroots Innovations: Exploring the role of community-based social movements in sustainable energy transitions
The challenges of sustainable development (and climate change and peak oil, in particular) demand system-wide transformations in sociotechnical systems of provision. An academic literature around coevolutionary innovation for sustainability has recently emerged as an attempt to understand the dynamics and directions of such sociotechnical transformations, which are termed ‘sustainability transitions’. This literature has previously focused … Continue reading »
Book chapter: Civil society in sustainable energy transitions
How does civil society feature in wide-scale transformation processes to socio-technical systems like energy? In this book chapter, Adrian Smith explors ways of addressing this question by drawing upon concepts and frameworks from literatures on civil society, social movements, and socio-technical transitions. Whilst it is clear civil society is always involved, and in important ways, … Continue reading »
Working Paper: Money, Money, Money? A scoping study of community currencies
A new working paper presents results of the first global scoping study of community currencies for sustainability. As a response to the unsustainability of current global financial systems, parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth. … Continue reading »
