Five transition pathways to renewable energy futures—scenarios from a Delphi study on key drivers and policy options

Abstract

At many levels of society—in regions, corporations, and among citizens—awareness is increasing, and actions towards more sustainable energy are being taken. The key drivers of this transition have been climate change, the scarcity of resources, and environmental consciousness. The speed of change and its impacts on the energy system transition are still unknown. It is therefore important to anticipate probable, preferable, or avoidable future paths that will contribute to the discussion of the direction and conditions of such futures. In this article, five energy scenarios are presented for Finland until 2030. The scenarios are based on a two-round Delphi application, in which energy experts were first interviewed and then a survey phase was conducted. We used cluster analysis to construct the scenarios and arranged the responses to open-ended questions as narratives to deepen the scenarios. Based on the cluster analysis, five clusters were constructed, namely, (1) business as usual, (2) energy saving and decarbonisation, (3) climate-friendly transformation, (4) green growth, and (5) degrowth. These scenarios illustrate how varying sets of drivers of change in society, and a set of energy policy measures, are connected with energy futures. Expert information thus organised can be used to advise policymakers when designing future climate and energy policy.

Options for making responsive future strategy to foster sustainability transitions in the German agri-food sector: a Delphi-based approach

“…Building on the RRI framework, this research aimed to contribute to sustainability transitions in the German agri-food sector by explicitly identifying potential future response options for research and innovation to address diverging innovation-driven future changes that have been collectively anticipated and reflected upon beforehand. This has contributed to existing agri-food transitions research by focusing on the German context [29,30,[61][62][63]. Additionally, the Delphi procedure constituting a third-Delphi round has added a specific focus to get the most out of future options that yield missed chances for sustainability or to mitigate harmful effects.…”

“…As the global challenges of climate change, environmental pollution, and resource depletion continue to mount, an expansive interdisciplinary research domain has emerged, focusing on sustainability transitions [26,48,61,75]. Notably, sustainability transitions research has helped to better understand and govern transitions in various sectors [22,42,77,79], to make suggestions for innovation to increase their transformative nature [23,40,45], or to identify interdependencies between sectors across different geographies, be it at the local, European or global level, in order to prevent adverse effects in the future [17,50,76].…”

“…Foresight has evolved as a systematic approach for examining and deliberating upon complex futures, aiding [19,30,39,60,61,67]. Specifically, Foresight can play a crucial role in strategic planning by helping science, technology and innovation to proactively prepare for and shape the future with clear imaginaries [33,53,57].…”

Storylines nailing or failing sustainability: Energy, mining and mobility as narrative arenas for societal transition

“…Especially, the species reliant on old-growth forests are portrayed as victims of current forestry practices, alongside with people using forests for recreation or for amenities other than timber (Kangas et al, 2018;Simkin et al, 2020). Notably, criticism of the interpretation of forest bioenergy as carbon-neutral has emerged only recently (Rikkonen et al, 2021). This has been largely disregarded or rejected by policy-makers and interest groups favoring wood use and defending wood as a well-managed renewable resource vital for the Finnish economy.…”

“…It challenges the ideal of energy efficiency through a centralized energy system dominated by fossil fuels and nuclear energy and emphasises potentials for utilization of decentralized domestic resources obtained from rural areas. However, the storyline is increasingly challenged by arguments questioning the validity of the assumption of the carbon neutrality of wood burning (Norton et al, 2019;Rikkonen et al, 2021). The discursive position of bioenergy as the only major renewable energy form with considerable growth potential has changed because wind energy and heat pumps have rapidly transitioned from belittled future promises to important parts of the current energy palette.…”