Resilience and Energy Transition

Investigating the transition towards renewable energies bringing together conceptual ideas from resilience and transitions thinking.

(c) Fre Sonneveld

Project team: Prof. Claudia R. Binder, Romano Wyss, Susan Mühlemeier

The production, transmission and consumption of green energy is key for the transition of urban areas to sustainability. Up to now, our urban life-styles, consumption patterns and mobility are largely based on fossil fuels. Fossil energy carriers still make up for (far) over 50% of the overall energy consumption per capita in most of the advanced economies of the world.

In our research, we investigate the transition towards renewable energies from two angles: the actor and the system. By bringing together conceptual ideas from resilience and transitions thinking, we investigate the actor-system duality and contribute to a better understanding of transition processes and their stabilization over time.

From an actor’s perspective, we focus on understanding change in individual behaviour, decision-making processes as well as on economic and political agency on all levels. From a system’s perspective, we focus on actor networks, energy governance and the assessment of long-term transition pathways.

 

Susan Mühlemeier

I contributed to this research with my doctoral project –Resilience and agency in mature sustainability transitions: Theoretical conceptualisation and empirical analysis of actor- and system-level dynamics in sociotechnical energy systems–.

Susan Mühlemeier, PhD student

Publications

The Resilience of Sustainability Transitions

T. Schilling; R. Wyss; C. Binder 

Sustainability. 2018-12-04. Vol. 10, num. 12, p. 4593. DOI : 10.3390/su10124593.

An Indicator-Based Approach for Analysing the Resilience of Transitions for Energy Regions. Part II: Empirical Application to the Case of Weiz-Gleisdorf, Austria

R. Wyss; S. Mühlemeier; C. Binder 

Energies. 2018-10-15. Vol. 11, num. 9, p. 2263. DOI : 10.3390/en11092263.

“A particular species” urban utility companies in Germany and Switzerland

S. Mühlemeier 

Network Industries Quarterly. 2018-03-27. Vol. 20, num. 1, p. 3-8.

Dinosaurs in transition? A conceptual exploration of local incumbents in the swiss and German energy transition

S. Muehlemeier 

Environmental Innovation And Societal Transitions. 2019-06-01. Vol. 31, p. 126-143. DOI : 10.1016/j.eist.2018.12.003.

“It’s an Endurance Race” An Indicator-Based Resilience Analysis of the Energy Transition in the Allgäu Region, Bavaria

S. Mühlemeier; C. R. Binder; R. Wyss 

GAIA ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY. 2017. Vol. 26, num. S1, p. 161-224. DOI : 10.14512/gaia.26.S1.7.

An Indicator-Based Approach for Analyzing the Resilience of Transitions for Energy Regions. Part I: Theoretical and Conceptual Considerations

C. R. Binder; S. Mühlemeier; R. Wyss 

Energies. 2017. Vol. 10, num. 1, p. 36. DOI : 10.3390/en10010036.