NTRANS - The Norwegian Centre for Energy Transition Studies

About the project

NTRANS consist of five Research Areas (RAs). TIK coordinates RA 2 “Accelerating the energy transition” but contributes also to other RAs. More information on other RAs can be found here. Associate Professor Allan Dahl Andersen coordinates NTRANS’ work at TIK. 

Background

A sustainability transition typically unfolds over distinct phases including pre-formation, start-up, acceleration, and stabilization. Central to the early phases is the nurturing and formation of new niche technologies, while the acceleration phase is characterized by upscaling and massive diffusion of those core technologies (e.g. in the case of energy transitions, renewable energy technologies that help achieve key environmental goals as decarbonization). The last phase sees a new socio-technical configuration stabilize. Most countries are still in the first two of these phases which is also what research has focussed on hitherto. To address global warming, transitions need to enter the acceleration phase.

RA2 consists of three work packages (WPs) that reflects different aspects of the acceleration challenge.

The complete project description can be found here.

Sub-projects

• WP1: The rate of innovation. How to overcome barriers to upscaling and diffusion of key innovations to accelerate energy transitions  
• WP2: Resource mobilization. How to increase the scale of resources allocated to energy transition?

• WP3: Transformative innovation policy. How to govern increasingly complex, urgent and contested energy transition?

Objectives

RA2 explores different aspects of drivers and barriers for entering the acceleration phase with a view to distill recommendations for business strategies and policymakers as well as to achieve theoretical advancements.

The overarching goal is to conceptualize, analyze and understand new phenomena associated with accelerating transitions to generate new knowledge that business actors and policymakers can use in their decision-making processes. Achieving this goal includes:

1. Revision of existing transition studies theories to better analyse new phenomena associated with accelerating transitions
2. Empirical analysis of key technologies, industry actors, institutions, and policymaking central to accelerating transitions
3. Development and diffusion of recommendations for business actors and policymakers on strategy, governance and policy coordination across actors, technologies, sectors, scales, and policy domains for accelerated energy transition.

Outcomes

The research will build a knowledge base for the road to and the consequences of deep and rapid energy conversion for different groups in society. An important part of this is to find out how the restructuring can be done fairly and democratically, while at the same time providing business opportunities for innovation and value creation from Norwegian resources. The center brings together sociology, political science, economics, economic geography, science and technology studies, innovation studies.

Financing

NTRANS is financed by the Norwegian Research Council.

Cooperation

An overview of the project partners can be found here.