On September 26th 2014, TIK's new seminar series The Energy Revolution kicked off with an exciting talk by Professor Jochen Markard from ETH. Markard's presentation was titled "The Energy Transition: Actors, Strategies and Coalitions", and among the participants were representatives from academia, industry, NGOs and more.
First seminar: The Energy Transition
Professor Markard gave examples of past global and national energy transitions, and identified 5 key characteristics to understanding the dynamics of energy transitions:
- The central role of technology
- Regulation & policy making
- Actors & strategic interests
- Systemness
- Context dependency
In the second part of the presentation, Markard presented findings from recent research that analyses these aspects in greater detail. The first was a study of actor strategies related to the field of smart grid technology, and the second concerned recent changes in advocacy coalitions in the Swiss energy policy system.
The last topic of the day was the energy transition and public policy. Though some studies indicate policy core beliefs have not changed, others show that the number of actors who accept that there is an energy revoluton is rising.
For more information on this seminar, visit our Norwegian website.