We will study the temporal aspects of commercialization of new technologies, diffusion of existing technologies (e.g. hydrogen and CCS), and policies balancing innovation incentives and creating markets, including user practice changes.
We will explore the conditions for innovation development and rapid diffusion, and whether and how properties of innovations matter (e.g. social vs. technical innovations, complex vs. modular innovations, compatibility with existing infrastructure). We will analyze selected cases of rapid and slow development diffusion to identify the most important factors influencing the rate of change.
The WP will also study the links between transitions and ICTs, asking whether and how these technologies and their associated new business models can accelerate energy transitions and shifts in practice nexuses (e.g. service and sharing economy).
A characteristic of accelerating transitions is that they gradually become more and more pervasive. Energy transitions move from being primarily a single sector phenomenon to become a multi-sectoral process of structural change with ripple effects across the economy. This implies that analysts require new frameworks and methods for grasping inter-sectoral dynamics in transitions (Andersen et al., 2019). We will explore such issues by analyzing challenges in inter-sectoral alignments for diffusion of innovations, by analyzing multi-purpose technologies applied across multiple sectors, and by analyzing broader structural economic effects of widening transitions.