POLICY BRIEF: “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
This project was funded by IDRIC (under EPSRC award number: EP/V027050/1). The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of IDRIC. Neither IDRIC nor EPSRC can be held responsible for them.
Associated Research
MIP 5.5 The political economy of Sunset vs. Sunrise industry strategies