The multi level perspective on socio technical transitions: some reflections on concepts, spaces and scales in sustainable energy transitions

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1 The multi level perspective on socio technical transitions: some reflections on concepts, spaces and scales in sustainable energy transitions Adrian Smith, SPRU (Science & Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex Intervention note for the ESRC Seminar Series Geographies of energy transition: security climate governance Seminar 1: Energy Transition: From Histories to Geographies University of Leicester, 26 th Nov 2009 Introduction This written intervention attempts three things. First, it introduces a multi level perspective (MLP) on socio technical transitions that has been used to study energy transitions, historically and prospectively. Second, it considers how places, spaces and scales feature in this multi level analytical framework. Third, it looks briefly at things the other way around, and considers how energy transition processes reconfigure places, spaces and scales. Some reflections on the politics of situated sustainable energy transitions are offered by way of a conclusion. I approach this task as a former mechanical engineer, political scientist and working in the science, technology and society (STS) studies. I am a contract researcher whose interests rest in the politics and governance of sustainable innovation. Energy has been a major empirical domain for me over the last couple of decades. My specific interest in the multi level perspective here stems from: a) Adapting it to analyse the histories of radical green niches in the UK (Smith, 2007; Smith, 2006); b) Contributing to critical debates about the conceptualisation of this framework in relation to questions of governance and governability (Smith et al, 2005; Smith and Stirling, 2007); and c) Critical studies of policy processes pioneered in the Netherlands and elsewhere that try to institutionalise transitions type approaches to transforming energy systems (Smith and Kern, 2009; Scrase and Smith, 2009). The multi level perspective on socio technical transitions Governments, and many researchers, invest considerable hope in innovation to stretch and redefine environmental limits, including carbon emissions (Mowery et al, 2009). When one considers the scale of 1

2 carbon emission reduction ambitions, however, then it soon becomes apparent that we are no longer talking about the greening of innovation systems alone. Difficult as it is to re orientate innovation systems towards providing a flow of lower carbon goods and services, it still might not be sufficient. Indeed, the diffusion of these goods and services is facilitated by wider infrastructural and institutional change (Elzen et al, 2005). Ultimately, we are talking about the sustainable, low carbon transformation of entire sectors of our economy and society (see Figure 1). I believe this implies not just low carbon products, but low carbon infrastructures and institutions too. Figure 1: The decarbonisation challenge in UK policy (source: Committee on Climate Change, 2008). Historical studies note that these kinds of transition have been drawn out over periods of 50 or more years, and suggest we might expect the same timescales for future transitions (Geels and Shot, 2007). This is depressing compared to the urgency to mitigate that scientific consensus suggests is needed in order to avoid dangerous climate change. Historic transitions include a long period of experimentation, demonstration and constituency building, before achieving the institutional and infrastructure reforms that enable a take off of the novel practice. Arguably, we have had 30 years of experimentation with some transformative energy technologies that are also low carbon so perhaps there are reasons to be hopeful, if institutional reforms remove uncertainties and commit to these alternatives rapidly (Scrase and Mackerron, 2009). 2

3 Innovation research in both evolutionary economics and STS traditions argues transformative processes be conceived as challenges of socio technical re configuration (Rip and Kemp, 1998). Considerable technical, economic, sociological and political work has to be done to align discourses, actors, artefacts and institutions into a working ensemble. Consider all the material, discursive and institutional elements and changes needed to make an offshore wind farm succeed: specialized knowledge, reliable technologies, skilled workers, investment capital, grid infrastructures, maintenance services, willing customers, profitable markets, acceptable environmental impacts, and so on, and so on. Considerable social agency is required. Price signals from carbon markets combined with public R&D may struggle to generate all these alignments. At the same time, researchers note that developing highly novel, path breaking socio technical configurations takes place in a context of deeply embedded, substantially institutionalized and widely reproduced socio technical regimes (Unruh, 2000). The accumulation of capabilities and skills, business models and markets, capital and other interests, infrastructures and technologies, institutions and user routines, political commitments and social values, constitute powerful path dependencies driving incremental innovations in socio technical regimes (Geels, 2002). At times, it can appear as though societies are locked in to certain regimes, such as the centralized generation and distribution of energy from fossil fuels underpinning high energy consumption lifestyles. However, inflexible path dependent alignments can, under certain circumstances, become a source of fragility as circumstances change. Moreover, internal misalignments, brought about by technical changes or shifts in ownership for instance, can combine with external processes, such as rising environmental awareness, demographic change, and resource shifts. Such processes can unsettle regimes and open windows of opportunity for alternatives to develop, and perhaps seed transitions towards quite different regimes. Clearly, we are talking about a very complex and heterogeneous collection of processes here. There are a variety of ways of simplifying and thinking about that complexity. The multi level perspective (MLP) on socio technical transitions is one way (Rip and Kemp, 1998; Geels, 2002). I believe it provides analytical purchase by providing a framework for situating and relating to one another dynamically the structureand agency oriented processes above. The framework was pioneered by Dutch researchers, including Arie Rip, Johan Schot, René Kemp and Frank Geels in the Netherlands; but now attracts a growing network of international researchers, who bring their own perspectives and interpretations to bear, such as Markard and Truffer (2008; bringing in innovation systems), Elizabeth Shove and Gordon Walker (2007; bringing in constructivist and practice theory sensibilities), Audley Genus and Anne Marie Coles (2008; bringing in actor network theory), Andy Stirling, Frans Berkhout and myself (2005; bringing in constructivist and political science issues); and others. The framework is presented schematically in Figure 2. The innovative configuration of novel socio technical practices (e.g. low carbon housing) is considered to take place in niches. These spaces of socio technical agency afford some protections for the alternative practice (see later), which cannot compete directly with the incumbent, more structured and structuring socio technical regime. An example could be to consider distributed micro renewables in the UK as currently constituting a niche, in the context of a centralised, fossil fuelled regime in which prevailing 3

4 energy infrastructures and institutions have, until recently, been highly disadvantageous towards microrenewables. 4

5 Figure 2: the multi level perspective on socio technical transitions In their different ways, both the niche(s) and regime(s) define and relate to a specific societal function, such as certain energy services. The realisation 1 of these societal functions is the starting point for the analysis and the reconstruction of the niche and regime socio technical configurations. At the same time, niches and regimes are situated in similar landscape contexts, though they experience them and identify with them in different ways. For instance, processes articulating social pressure for carbon emissions reduction (e.g. social movements, policy measures, green business strategies), means different things for actors and processes configuring the micro renewables niche (e.g. a potential opportunity), compared to the incumbent electricity regime (e.g. an inconvenience). The MLP theorises transitions arising through interactions between these three levels: it is the way niches, regimes and landscape processes interact that determines the specific transition (Smith et al, 2005; Geels and Schot, 2007). On rare occasions a niche develops and grows, and it displaces more and more of the incumbent regime provision. Hybrid versions emerge as niche ideas are appropriated into an adapting regime. Further destabilisations and growth opportunities arise, but eventually a new regime becomes discernable. 1 I use realise to denote the dual, iterative processes of, a) figuring out needs, and b) satisfying those needs. 5

6 The MLP has been used to orientate the analysis of various kinds of energy transitions: 1. Historical analyses explaining successful energy transitions at varying scales (e.g. the move from sail shipping to steam shipping, the move from coal/town gas to natural gas) 2. Analyses of sustainable energy niches and explanations of the difficulties they face in becoming more widespread (e.g. ultra low energy housing compared to volume housing) 3. Both 1. and 2. inform prescriptive and prospective uses of the framework, and develop policy recommendations for strategic niche management and transition policies that might improve the chances of sustainable, low carbon energy transitions. In policy prescriptive mode, socially negotiated visions for future low carbon energy systems form a point of departure for policy processes that back cast to the deliberate creation of experimental niches (Rotmans et al, 2001). These niches are sites for reflexive learning, expectation development, network building and, in cases where niches are promising, the institutionalisation of these practices through the development of further experiments. Analysis at SPRU has pointed to some transition processes evident in historic uses of the MLP and that are hitherto missing in transition policy recommendations, e.g. landscape and regime processes that destabilise incumbent energy practices and create opportunities for niches. The MLP has been used at a variety of scales. Analytically, socio technical systems of varying scales have been studied (e.g. international steam shipping, bio gasification systems, eco housing practices). Prospectively, policy jurisdictions of varying scales have undertaken transition policies (e.g. cities, regions, nations) (Loorbach, 2007). The niche and regime is a matter of empirical definition; in terms of the scale of practice in which one is interested, be it transitions in energy practice in the household, dominant wind turbine designs in the industry, entire electricity systems, or other units of analysis. The point is that one has to remain aware and open to activities going on beyond the unit of analysis, and interpret them in terms of what it means for one s core research concerns. Researchers using the MLP to date are have not explicitly considered these scalar and spatial issues and the methodological challenges they present. There has been considerable debate over how to operationalise the MLP. In different ways, critics argue its (inevitable) simplifications risk masking and reifying more than they reveal and explain (e.g. Shove and Walker, 2007). That debate is ongoing. I will not repeat it here. As with all analysis, the challenge is to simplify without being simplistic, and to be clear on what grounds and ways one is simplifying, and qualifying ones conclusions accordingly (Smith and Stirling, 2007). Rather, I wish to consider how spaces and scales can feature in this conceptual framework; whilst at the same time thinking about how transitions (as interpreted through the framework) can reconfigure spaces and scales. So, I am trying to think about the situatedness of transitions. Not being a geographer, I hope my speculative thoughts are misguided in an interesting way and that sparks discussion. 6

7 Places, spaces and scales in socio technical transitions How does the MLP incline us towards questions of spaces, scales, places and networks in energy transitions? I begin by understanding places, spaces and scales as follows, and recognising that each implicates the others. I take places to be rooted in locations, with their extent and character open to interpretation. Places are constructed by processes operating over a variety of scales, be they households, villages, cities, nations or regions. I take spaces to be conceptual as well as physical. Space can relate to, say, a cultural space, like the milieu of environmental activists who network across many places and spaces around the world. I think of scales as the extent of an activity and how it is bounded by actors interested in that activity (e.g. energy utility boardrooms mainly operate at an international scale, and whose concern for local investments is interpreted from their international business perspective). Whether these vague and idiosyncratic meanings of mine are used consistently in what follows I leave to the reader to decide; just as I leave it to seminar participants to compare the consequences of those meanings with better constructions of place, space and scale used by others, and which they can teach me about. The MLP uses three conceptual levels to explain transitions at any empirical scale, to be defined by the analyst. One could, for instance, use the MLP to analyse the stabilisation of wind turbine designs (regime) around the large, three bladed, horizontal axis, grid connected, cluster model compared to vertical axis and various scale options that were part of the wind energy flux in the 1970s. Or, as indicated above, one could use the MLP at a higher scale and consider wind energy as a niche, including various ownership models and designs, in the context of a fossil fuel regime dominated by multinational utilities. Each of our conceptual levels can manifest in the same place (though not necessarily see below). My home city of Brighton is powered by the same electricity regime as other cities in the UK (e.g. regulated at the national scale, owned and developed at the international scale, using the same kinds of technologies, facilitating similar user behaviours). At the same time, Brighton is a place where (sparse) experiments with micro renewable options are occurring. Meanwhile, city leaders, community activists, and business associations consider what climate change means for the city s energy future. Other cities may be articulating their visions and concerns with niche experimentation differently to Brighton. Compared to other cities sustainable energy efforts, Brighton is aspiring rather than pioneering. The way landscape processes manifest in places with different characteristics, provides opportunities for niches and unsettles regimes in different ways. Niches are conceptual spaces where the presence of the regime is sufficiently weak and permits experimentation with alternative socio technical configurations (Kemp et al, 1998). Niches provide a protective space for networks of experimenting actors to learn, develop expectations, institutionalise promising configurations, and try and gather support and development. Surprisingly, the MLP literature has not yet undertaken a systematic analysis of protective space. Empirical studies to date imply that it can variously consist of: economic protection (e.g. subsidies and price measures); institutional 7

8 protection (e.g. modified regulations, preferential grid access); socio cognitive protection (e.g. research institutes, training programmes); cultural protection (e.g. community energy ambitions, iconic configurations for environmentalists); spatial protection (e.g. resource attributes, favourable local economic histories); and political (e.g. embodying a political programme, like eco towns, effective low carbon leadership). The distribution of these different forms of protection across different spaces, scales and places poses many interesting transitions governance challenges. Moreover, it is important to remember that regimes too benefit from protections (Smith et al, 2005). These can be the advantages of historically accumulated alignments, but also more active forms of public subsidy, such as for fossil energy in many parts of the world. Some places might, for example, bring meaningful historical and social narratives into the realisation of abstract goals. They generate regionally relevant visions whose symbolism and specificity carry greater moral authority as a result (e.g. work by Philip Späth and Harald Rohracher (2010) suggests energy security was less mobilizing than protecting Murau by building a local bio energy economy in their study of sustainability visions in that region in Austria). Places might provide a site conducive for political deliberation, where place identity (reflected in public sentiments ), local knowledge and relational resources may be mobilized for innovative practices. However, this is an empirical question. Some places might be so riddled with problematic power relations and factions that warm and inspiring sustainability visions do not hold. Indeed, advocates still have to pull in resources and assistance across scales and negotiate and translate across the different visions that hold at those scales and places. Energy officers at English Regional Development Agencies who make similar international tours of renewable energy technology headquarters, and who try and persuade investment in the technology s development in their region, have the task of aligning the energy vision of regional political and economic elites with the commercial interests of international technology holders. In (action) research for prospective sustainability transitions, the negotiation of shared visions is important. Their significance rests in the need to mobilize and coordinate activities. The discussion here suggests an added need for visions to be shared across scales and through networks. These shared visions, necessarily open to flexible interpretation, must embody the mutual understandings (and material interests) of a variety of actors operating at various scales, and must help (re )define and align territorial and (more networked) regime and niche interests. The role of mobile intermediary organizations becomes important in operating between places, across scales and within the spatially distributed regimes and niches upon which transition strategies depend. As Simon Marvin and Mike Hodson have argued (2009), showcase projects that demonstrate and develop niche socio technical configurations can be seen as important vehicles. But one can now see how these showcases have to satisfy the local need, draw in resources, capabilities, and technologies from other scales and places, whilst promising exportable lessons, products and services. 8

9 It seems reasonable to assume that various protections are distributed unevenly. Some places offer sufficient protection for experiments to take root and thrive. 2 As these place based experiments network, and as intermediaries promote their diffusion, scaling up and translation into other, less protective settings over time, so experiments contribute to the development of the niche space (Figure 3). Diffusion processes de contextualise socio technical pracices (into mobile knowledge, capabilities and artefacts) and then re contextualise them in new settings. Niches facilitate this diffusion. Figure 3: Emerging level of niches in relation to local practices in projects (Geels and Raven, 2006) Global level (community, field) Shared rules (problem agendas, search heuristics, expectations, abstract theories, technical models) Emerging technological trajectory Framing, coordinating Aggregation, learning Local projects, carried by local networks, characterised by local variety Note that the global level needs to garner consensus, and manage contestation, if it is to become a robust niche. The figure serves to illustrate the point here, which is about the distinction between placebased experimentation and niche space. Denmark as a place for developing wind energy, for instance, had certain cultural, institutional and political forms of protection that enabled a niche to become established much more rapidly and forcefully compared to other places (Jørgensen and Karnøe, 1995). However, the creation of Danish wind industries also benefitted from the wind rush in parts of the US in the early 1980s, where generous subsidies provided opportunities for wind turbine and business model development. When the US wind rush collapsed, the Danish government helped bolster the domestic market, and so sustained a Danish wind energy niche until international markets picked up again. But processes in other (differently protected) places were contributing to the development of a (global) wind energy niche (and continue to do so). An example is the way the big science wind research programmes in the UK, whilst failing to 2 Critics of transition theory, such as Hommels et al (2007), argue that protection actually undermines innovation by removing the motivating effects of competition and vulnerability. Transition theory argues purposive protections are temporary, and should be withdrawn. The hotly debated experience of Import Substituting Industrialisation in different places illustrates the ambivalence and difficulties of protective spaces, and how the forms and processes of protection mentioned above need to be consciously linked to (analytically and normatively) processes of capability building and competition within and beyond those spaces. 9

10 create commercial technologies, nevertheless succeeded (indirectly and at cost) in equipping a workforce of researchers with skills that helped them become consultants and developers of wind farms in the late 1990s. Many other networked, spatially distributed illustrations might be provided, such as the relatively generous and consistent subsidies and innovation capabilities of some national and subnational states attracting multi national technology investment compared to other states. So whilst one can bound one s study by considering niche developments in a particular territorial place, one has to recognise that the networks of experiments that constitute niche development operate across places and at different scales. Core landscape, regime and niche processes operate at the international scale, e.g. the ownership of local infrastructures by multi national utilities, investments from globally mobile capital, niche alternatives promoted by global civil society, a (troubled) neo liberal ideological landscape, or technological and environmental standards set by international committees. Regimes and niches are reproduced by processes operating across multiple scales, but they manifest in different ways in particular places. However one approaches an emphasis on places, spaces and scales in transitions, it seems to me that our interest in them can be helpfully oriented by the MLP. First, research can be interested in how sustainability experiments in specific places are networked (Raven et al, 2008). These networks help constitute niche spaces, whose mobile, generalisable lessons, shared expectations and practices need to be recontextualised into other places, and perhaps over time come to operate over broader scales through processes of replication, translation and scaling up. Indeed, where sustainability solutions include niches for offshore wind, then we can see that these experiments are already operating at quite large scale, and seek to go even larger. Second, one can consider how different places, spaces and scales contribute to the unsettling of energy regimes. Global civil society and international agreements can render fossil fuel regimes socially problematic, for instance. So too can locality based campaigns for change or for economic regeneration. Third, one can consider how interactions between niches and regimes, and therefore transition processes operate across a variety of places, at different scales. The conjunction of electricity regime problems and niche opportunities will be influenced by this geography. So far, I have considered how places (predominantly) relate to MLP transition spaces that operate simultaneously on different scales. This has not been easy, since the MLP is a flexible conceptual framework that can be applied to different empirical scales. The choice of empirical scale (e.g. whether city scale energy aspirations cf. energy technology development; or household energy practices cf. national energy governance) has a strong bearing on the way places, spaces and scales are considered and implicated. In a UK city context, for example, the local polity has very limited direct influence over its energy infrastructures, investments and institutions, compared to the more powerful national and international scales. Applying the MLP to city level transitions therefore requires one to consider niches, regimes and landscapes in relation to political and economic jurisdictions operating well beyond the city as a place, but in which processes need to meet and manifest in that place (city as a space?). Other 10

11 countries devolve greater influence down to the city scale, and these countries might consequently be able to offer greater protective space to local scale sustainable energy socio technical experiments. Socio technical transitions and the reconfiguration of spaces and scales As transition processes unfold, so they can transform places (e.g. coalfield communities), re scale processes (e.g. international wind industry), and alter spaces (e.g. governance of city energy systems). It is worth recalling the intellectual history of the MLP, and the ambitions for carbon emissions reduction from energy systems. The MLP in its historical form was originally concerned with how technologies (understood as social constructs, or as socio technical practices and regimes) can transform societies as a whole (Schot, 1998). That is, large scale socio technical transformations. Places were important parts of the histories, but the interest was really how transformations in socio technical practice came to operate across societies as a whole. Irrespective of where one is situated, how does everyone become implicated in the same regime over time? Carbon emission reduction ambitions imply a similar society and economy wide concern over existing energy systems. It is clear we are talking about highly pervasive processes and outcomes. In (re )introducing spatial complexity into the MLP, I think one has to be clear why one is doing so, and have a clear eye on the important features and issues one wishes to examine and that are currently obscured by a scale blind 3 MLP conceptual framework. These kinds of wide spread (though not universal) transformations are characteristic consequences of socio technical regimes. Compared to an interest in how places and spaces help niches to form and gain influence, here we are interested in how emerging regimes (a later phase of transition) influence places and spaces. This suggests quite a distinct approach to the geography of energy transitions compared to that in the preceding section. Conclusions It might be the case that the MLP is wholly unsuited for considering place based transitions, and that it is best left to studying transitions in socio technical practice. Other frameworks might be more appropriate to the problem of city scale energy sustainability, and we should not stretch the MLP too far. However, it does seem that key concepts and processes within the MLP suggest ways of looking at collections of places and thinking across scales. This means considering places as sites for experimentation, and thus carriers of niche space. It means thinking about scales over which regimes 3 Note, the MLP is scale blind in the sense that it is open to analysing socio technical practices at any empirical scale, but is scale fixed in the sense that it wishes to understand the eventual spread of those practices across societies as a whole. 11

12 become unsettled, and unlock opportunities for the influential development of alternatives. And it requires us to think how places and spaces will themselves become transformed through energy transitions. Approaching questions of scales and spaces in energy transitions with the MLP, I tentatively and provisionally conclude that future research within that perspective needs to move from histories (and futures) to geographies in four ways: 1. Pay greater attention to those features of specific, empirical places that contribute to their being sites of experimentation. 2. Consider how these sites benefit from, and contribute towards, broader niche spaces, and the roles these are playing in sustainable, low carbon transitions. 3. Consider how these sites benefit from, and contribute towards, unsettling regimes, and the roles these are playing in sustainable, low carbon transitions. 4. Analyse the way large scale transition processes transform places and spaces into new, lower carbon forms; and how these general forms combine with local particularities. Ultimately, low carbon (and, hopefully, sustainable) energy transitions will involve the involuntary transformation of the lives of many members of societies. Given the scale, and coercive quality of low carbon transitions, there needs to be democratic oversight. A political approach emphasises that the learning in niches is unlikely to be singularly rational: there will be conflicts over the lessons to be drawn and subsequent actions to be taken (as well as which niches to protect, and which visions inform them in the first instance). Low carbon energy transition as a political programme cannot be limited to setting legally binding targets (though this is good), nor about nurturing innovation and unsettling regimes (though this is better), but ultimately it means binding people to certain socio technical practices, whilst ruling other practices out. Central to the shaping of low carbon energy transitions will be geographies of transition politics. Where are the places and spaces, and which are the scales, at which low carbon citizens, communities and business can be empowered? How can places connect concerns for low carbon transition with the more everyday and immediate concerns of people? How can lower carbon investment in important infrastructures bring hope and aspiration to everyday lives? How do these civic arenas and political jurisdictions intersect and connect with the geography of energy transitions? Such questions pervade the four research agendas above. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the ESRC STEPS Centre and Sussex Energy Group at SPRU for enabling my participation in the workshop, and for funding my recent research in sustainability transition theory and practice. I am also grateful to Lars Coenen at Lund University for comments on an earlier version of this intervention. 12

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