Innovation and institutional change: the transition to a sustainable ...

Chapter 1
Transition to a sustainable electricity system
Introduction and research questions
1.1 Introduction 1
Electricity has become taken for granted in industrialised societies. Like
water and food it is now regarded as a basic necessity expected to be
available at all times. The benefits of electricity are well known: it is a
resource indispensable for manufacturing the products we consume, and it is
a resource essential for the functioning of a wide range of products, such as
household and office appliances and appliances related to entertainment and
communication. The creation of these benefits has however come at
significant cost. Industrialised societies, and especially energy and transport
systems, are addicted to fossil fuels. The emergence and shape of these
systems is inextricably linked to the exploitation of fossil resources such as
coal, oil and gas. Apart from local and regional environmental problems,
carbon emissions through fossil fuel burning have created the problem of
human-induced global warming 2 . The nature of this global warming problem
is unprecedented: it threatens fundamental aspects of ecosystems and society
in decades to come 3 . The required response will be unprecedented as well:
one element is that it demands fundamental transformation of existing
1 The finalisation of this dissertation has taken place under the umbrella of a research
project ‘Transitions and transition paths’ funded by the energy research programme of the
Dutch Scientific Council and Novem. Support is gratefully acknowledged. Further support
was given by a research grant under the programme Innovation and Governance of the
Institute for Governance Studies of the University Twente and is gratefully acknowledged.
2 Global warming is in itself not a new phenomenon as Earth’s climate history shows cycles
of warming and cooling, to a significant extent associated with natural variations in CO2
concentration in the atmosphere. However the current rate and speed of change in CO2
concentration is generally accepted as unprecedented and generated by human activities
(IPPC, 2001).
3
The lag of the effects showing themselves is one aspect of the complex nature of the
problem: humans tend to fix problems once these have surfaced; in this case we have to
prevent or reduce the effects from occurring although we do not yet see and understand the
problem fully. This has led to the formulation of the so-called precautionary principle.
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