Fostering social tipping dynamics to Accelerate Sustainability Transitions

Introduction

Staying within a maximum global warming of 1.5 degrees requires an acceleration of the transition to a low carbon society. Current theory views such sustainability transitions as inevitably slow as they require interdependent changes throughout socio-technical systems.

Challenges to Current Theory

The observation that energy transition scenarios systematically underestimate the diffusion of key technologies challenges this view. Existing models that form the basis for energy transition scenarios do not include the positive feedbacks resulting from the interactions between civil society and energy transitions.

Importance of Interactions

Yet these interactions have been identified as important drivers and barriers of energy transitions, and as crucial in triggering the social tipping dynamics that can accelerate the energy transition. Social tipping dynamics in energy transitions occur when a small change or intervention has a large effect on emission reductions.

Gaps in Understanding

To date, some examples of social tipping dynamics have been identified, but both a systematic understanding of the mechanisms underlying social tipping dynamics and an evaluation of their potential policy leverage is missing.

Project Objectives

The overall objective of the FAST project is to explain and model social tipping dynamics and interventions in energy transitions. This requires a model that explains how the social factors influencing sustainability transitions scale up to realize social tipping dynamics.

Methodology

To this end, I will use a novel combination of:

1. Bottom-up agent-based modelling
2. Top-down diffusion modelling

This approach will capture the interactions in socio-technical systems that create tipping dynamics. It will bridge the qualitative field of sustainability transitions and the quantitative field of energy transitions modelling.

Project Team

A team consisting of the PI, 3 PhD students, a postdoc, and a research assistant will conduct the proposed study over five years. This is the first study that systematically integrates social tipping dynamics in quantitative models of energy transitions.