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BRIEFING PAPER: “Sunset and sunrise”: Offensive, exploratory, and defensive industry strategies in socio-technical energy transitions
Summary
Authors:
Brunilde Verrier
Neil Strachan
University College London
“Sunset and sunrise”: Offensive, exploratory, and defensive industry strategies in socio-technical energy transitions
- Industries have a crucial role to play in responding to, influencing, and enabling the socio-technical low-carbon energy transition
- Incumbent “sunset” industries are sometimes portrayed as “locked-in” and structurally resistant, but research highlights the diversity of their strategies, which can evolve from defensive, to exploratory, through to offensive as leaders of change
- Research and policy attention is needed on the deliberate decline of carbon intensive technologies and practices
- Industry and policy makers must seize the right window of opportunity to secure long-term benefits while minimising climate damage and transition costs
- Industrial clusters are important sources of multi-stakeholder collaborative actions
- Whole systems thinking, framing, narratives and system dynamics modelling are a key tool in helping industry navigate the energy transition
Associated Research
MIP 5.5 The political economy of Sunset vs. Sunrise industry strategies