Connecting the Digital and the Ecological Transitions

Keith Smith (2008) The challenge of environmental technology: promoting radical innovation in conditions of lock-in. Final report to the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Project Report. University of Tasmania, Hobart.

Abstract:

How can we sustain global economic performance while reducing and perhaps eliminating climate impacts?

This dual objective ultimately requires the innovation of radically new low or zero-emitting energy technologies. But what is involved in such innovation, and why and how should governments support it? What are the implications for innovation policymakers?

The paper discusses the nature of the innovation challenge of climate change, develops a framework for analysing modes of innovation, applies the framework to energy technologies and analyses policies for energy innovation.

The overall argument is that we are 'locked in' to an unsustainable but large-scale hydrocarbon energy system. Despite widespread innovation efforts and incentives, these are not yet addressing the innovation challenge on an adequate scale. Addressing these issues will involve new mission-oriented programs, coordinated by new or modified transnational agencies.

The analytical framework sees technologies not as single techniques but as multi-faceted technological 'regimes'. Regimes involve production organisations and methods, scientific and engineering knowledge organisation, infrastructures, and social patterns of technology use.

We live not with individual energy technologies but with a complex hydrocarbon regime.