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Growing environmental concerns, emerging economies, and the strong uncertainties about future prices of fossil fuels as well as about CO2emissions contribute to a potential renaissance for biorefining industries. According to theories on technology shifts and innovations (e.g. [Utterback, J. M. 1994.Mastering the dynamics of innovation. How companies can seize opportunities under technological change. Harvard Business School Press]), heavy process industries like pulp and paper tend to be rigid towards disruptive innovations and instead focus on incremental innovations and economies of scale. However, a major empirical contribution from this case study demonstrates that some incumbents may escape the lock-in and form a new biomass development block. The study also contributes to academic as well as technology and innovation management perspectives in process-based and natural resource-based industries, where process innovations are tightly coupled with product innovations in inter-industry (vertical) linkages, the so-called development block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 2004 to 2008, a bubble formed in clean technologies, such as solar, biofuels, batteries and other renewable energy sources. In this paper, we analyse this clean-tech bubble through the lens of the Social Bubble Hypothesis, which holds that bubbles can accelerate technological innovation. We synthesise the development of the clean-tech bubble, its history, and the role of venture capital and government funding in catalysing it, and present evidence that the clean-tech bubble constituted an example of an innovation-accelerating process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy sector needs to transform towards sustainability. The multi-level perspective on sociotechnical transitions is embracing an enactment perspective, which focuses on the agency of various actors in shifting transitions pathways but has yet to study local urban experiments from such an enactment perspective. Our empirical research examines an innovation intermediary’s work in destabilising the regime rules in relation to the local energy incumbent company in Helsinki, Finland. Our paper seeks answers to the questions: How does the collaboration of the intermediary and the local energy company unfold? What are the impacts of the intermediary work on the local energy company in terms of enactment of transition pathways and what are the mechanisms causing the impact? Our research shows that the intermediary contributes to the transition by disturbing existing rules, structures, practices and networks by convening innovation champions from different constituencies, renegotiating regime rules and disrupting existing R&D alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporting the development and diffusion of sustainable innovations has become a dominant topic on the political agenda of many countries. However, this has proven to be a difficult task. To increase insight in such processes, this paper takes biofuel technologies in the mobility sector as the topic of a comparative case study. Various national governments have supported innovation trajectories around biofuels. We analyse, assess and compare two such trajectories as they have developed so far: one in the Netherlands and one in Sweden. A Technological Innovation System (TIS) approach is applied. A TIS is constituted by actors, networks and institutions, that are to be gradually constructed around a technology. We analyse whether governments and entrepreneurs have succeeded in developing seven key processes, or system functions, necessary for the development and diffusion of biofuel technologies. By analysing the build-up of system functions over time we identify virtuous and vicious forms of cumulative causation. The Dutch and Swedish TISs for biofuels are followed from 1990 to 2005. Our comparison shows that, due to a variety in function fulfilment and the emergence of cumulative causation, the Swedish TIS has reached a market expansion and broad social implementation of biofuels, whereas the Dutch TIS has established considerably less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy industries that replace fossil fuels with biomass-based alternatives are at the forefront of a shift to and an advanced bioeconomy. In the United States, government policies promote second-generation liquid biofuels that use non-food feedstocks like switchgrass to foster industry development. Although government policies and related industry activity created a market niche for switchgrass biofuels, geographic, technical, and institutional barriers limit industry development and regional branching. Policy alone has not been enough to disrupt an industry path dominated by corn-based production. Formation of a switchgrass-based biofuel industry depends on stabilisation of production around a series of inter-related process innovations. Unlike corn-based biofuels, switchgrass and other cellulosic biofuels have no single existing related industry value chain to use to resolve coordination problems. The experience with switchgrass sheds light on the innovation process in general by drawing attention to the early stage of science and technology development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we analyse how situated learning influences niche development. Situated learning is tied to social action and context, perceiving knowledge and learning as socially constructed. In addition, a dialectic view of structure and agency is adopted. Policymaking is used as an example of a community. A qualitative case study of Finnish energy policy is presented. The regime in Finland is the electricity industry that supports bioenergy, while wind energy development is supported by active individuals and a few niche actors. The full-members of the policymaking community consist of the government and the regime actors. The niche actors did learn how the community functions and developed alternative strategies accordingly, but without success. A reason could be that the niche actors excluded the regime from their strategies. We conclude that situated learning is likely to enhance niche development, but compromises in niche development may be needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US Renewable Fuel Standard contains a policy bias that undermines the three-broad policy goals of rural development, energy security, and greenhouse gas reductions. This policy bias, wherein a narrow range of options is expected to address broad societal objectives, contributes to a persistence of first-generation biofuels and limits technical variation. Renewable fuel content requirements have helped to expand the use of ethanol and biodiesel in the short term. However, long-term changes will require greater technological variation to stimulate innovation for the development of sustainable renewable fuel pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of global warming and strong dependence on fossil fuels, modern wood pellet heating systems for space heating of detached houses have emerged as a new technological option in many parts of the world. In Sweden, in recent years, such systems have advantages over oil-fired and electric boiler systems in terms of the expected total lifecycle heating costs to consumers. However, market diffusion of this technology has hitherto been rather slow. By combining an extended configuration cycle model with a dynamic multi-level perspective on system innovation, we study the factors involved in the diffusion of such systems in Sweden. The results indicate that energy policy, abundance of raw material and a wide dissemination of district heating systems have fostered the emergence and growth of the Swedish pellet market. However, other factors, such as a lack of co-ordination between the pellet and equipment suppliers in the early phase of market development, annual operating cost, lack of information, dissatisfaction among earlier adopters and technology lock-in might have contributed to the relatively slow growth of the market for small-scale systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]