Growing Grassroots Innovations: Exploring the Role of Community-Based Initiatives in Governing 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 on market-based technological innovations. Here we apply it to a new context of civil-society-based social innovation and examine the role of community-based initiatives in a transition to a low-carbon sustainable economy in the UK. We present new empirical research from a…

• RC
  Research Councils UK
• EA
  Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

  Awards: EP/H051139/1, EP/H050930/1
• EA
  Economic and Social Research Council

  Award: ES/I00145X/1