Modern civilizations have evolved to be highly dependent on electrical energy. The exponentially growing renewables market has signaled transitions in electricity sectors that have traditionally been dominated by fossil fuel electricity. Various theoretical debates have recently emerged surrounding the processes of socio-technical transition, focusing on the pathways of transition, the levers for radical change and path-dependencies within these systems. The Multi-Level Perspective on Socio-technical Transitions is one such theory. This perspective views socio-technical change as a factor of interdependent shifts between three analytical levels observed within the system: the socio-technical regime, the socio-technical niche and the landscape. In accordance with this theory, radical change is generally observed as originating at niche level. Irregularities within the dominant regime and landscape pressures allow for niche innovations to break through into the dominant regime in processes of socio-technical transition. Toward understanding actor influences on energy transitions, considerable attention has been paid to actor's impact on governance processes through: patterns of consumption, the shaping of legislation and technical innovations, by socio-technical transitions theories. However less attention has been paid to the ways in which actors in renewable electricity markets are: forming networks toward the establishment of new regimes and governing processes at niche level, and consequently how actor governance has impacted the established perceptions and available pathways for realizing electric security. This thesis, builds on the Multi-Level Perspective, through an exploration of how actors govern socio-technical systems at niche level, paying careful attention to the modalities of power giving and power taking that allow for the development of networks of people and things toward the stabilization of novel socio-technical practices, innovations and developmental trajectories. It does this through a networked analysis of how different actors with different interests cooperate to open up innovative social and technological pathways.

This thesis seeks to provide a detailed understanding of the introduction of dockless bike-sharing to London. As part of a wave of new smart and shared mobility services that are aiming to transform the way people move around cities, this emerging form of transport has created disruptions in London since its launch in 2017. This study aims to analyse to what extent dockless bike-sharing aligns or conflicts with the aims and objectives of local authorities governing public space in London. In doing so, it also aims to reveal insights into transformations in contemporary mobility by exploring the dynamics of niche innovations within socio-technical transitions, thus contributing to knowledge in the field of transition studies.To do this, a qualitative case study methodology was employed using document analysis and interviews with four stakeholders integrally involved in the case study, representing both public authorities and a private sector dockless bike-sharing operator, Mobike.The findings demonstrate that dockless bike-sharing is well aligned with the city’s explicit objectives to reduce car dependency and encourage active travel. It has particular potential to make cycling more accessible by bringing bike-sharing to parts of the city that do not have access to the pre-existing, docked bike-sharing scheme, operated by the central transport authority, Transport for London. Despite this, dockless bike-sharing, as a niche innovation, has struggled to break into the existing urban mobility regime. This can be seen to result from a variety of factors that include a failure to collaborate and build local legitimacy or pay sufficient regard to local conditions during early implementation. Furthermore, dockless bike-sharing’s demand for flexible parking has resulted in uses and misuses of public space that have created friction and placed the innovation in conflict with the existing physical urban landscape and the authorities that govern it. Its momentum has been further hindered by London’s complex governance structure, a structure which has not proved conducive to the dockless bike-sharing operating model. It is posited that if dockless bike-sharing is to build momentum and achieve its potential to expand the reach of bike-sharing in London, greater support is required from public authorities.

Background: Digital transformation is an important step in businesses’ quest for environmental sustainability, that changes their business models to create, deliver, and capture value from the use of digital technologies. Another field of research that concerns transformations, is research on socio-technical systems. It explains the adoption of new technologies, by incorporating the social context in which transitions happen. An industry that has been notoriously blamed for being conservative and having sustainability concerns, is the construction industry. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to contribute to socio-technical systems theory, by investigating how interactions in the socio-technical regime can help digitally transform established construction companies and make them more environmentally sustainable. Method: A qualitative case study was performed around Smart Built Environment, a strategic innovation program. From the program, nine reports were examined, and four employees were interviewed. Furthermore, three interviews were conducted with employees of three large construction companies, which were part of Smart Built Environment’s projects. The reports and interviews were used to develop a theoretical framework, which was constructed from existing literature on socio-technical systems, business models, and digital transformation. Conclusion: The results show that culture and habits, and policy and regulations in the regimes have the greatest influence on the digital transformation of construction companies. This is because they influence the relationships between the construction companies and other actors in the construction value chain. Changes to business models that were identified to facilitate the digital transformation were long-term collaborations, product-based development, co-creation, and using digital technologies as a use case for sustainability.

Urban planning needs to address the future role of transport infrastructure in cities. Due to previous planning ideals, our cities consist of transport networks that stand in conflict with ambitions to create dense and multifunctional urban environments, decrease pollution, and create safe urban space. Here, the urban street is a measure that enables new multifunctional solutions for transport infrastructures. This thesis, therefore, investigates street redevelopment projects in relation to the Swedish planning process, which is assessed through five case studies of street redevelopment projects in Swedish cities. Interviews combined with a desktop study are utilised as methods. The theoretical framework of obduracy and socio-technical transitions is applied to understand the mechanisms behind the hindering- and enabling factors present in the projects.  Our results show that hindering factors exist on the interpersonal scale in the projects between planners and planning departments, internally within the municipalities between planning organisation and politics, and externally between different actor groups such as public and state actors. Hindering factors are also identified in the physical infrastructure and historical context of the streets where older planning ideals still influence the physical and societal preconditions of the street networks. These factors slowed down the planning processes and led to compromises in aim and vision. It is not evident that the formal planning process should change in order to overcome these obstacles. Rather, it is the cooperation and coordination between actors that mainly determines the functionality of the process. Successful strategies in the projects have been; anchoring projects in municipal goals, combining incorporating different urban planning aspects and departments, municipalities as main actors, carefully assessing the location and context and integrating street redevelopment projects with broader development projects.

Rapid urbanization and limited resources is creating enormous challenges to cities in the global South, which has been increasingly acknowledged as a motivation for international cooperation in recent years. Both theory and practice have however paid little attention to how differences in geographical contexts and views on what sustainability is play out in such cooperation. This study therefore explores how Swedish actors have sought to contribute to urban sustainability in low-income countries in the Global South. These efforts are traced through a case study of the Swedish SymbioCity concept by using an actor-network theory approach. Policy mobility theory is used to discuss how the transfer and translation of policies between cities takes focus away from their contested nature. Concepts are then drawn from socio-technical transitions theory to discuss what this specifically means in transitioning towards sustainability. Data is gathered through review of written materials and semi-structured interviews with actors in the case study. In following the evolution of the Sustainable City concept, I argue that it has managed to mutate so well “from trade to aid” due to its “fluid” and lovable qualities and a notion of Swedish urban sustainability which can be flexibly interpreted. In tracing the networking of Swedish sustainability, I argue that SymbioCity has followed a previously observed pattern in which the approach has been adapted to travel and the recipients have been prepared to receive the approach. In considering how the approach has impacted its recipients, I argue that although its applications seem to have been appreciated, the translation of urban sustainability throughout the network has turned focus away from the issue of what urban sustainability is by coordinating activities and by educating the recipients’ attention towards techno-managerial problem framings. I conclude that Swedish actors have managed to carefully adopt a commercial model of urban sustainability to the purposes of development cooperation and its geographical contexts of application. While this mutation has given rise to a network of somewhat disconnected practices, the efforts of both branches have nevertheless contributed to establishing sustainability as being fundamentally uncontested in its nature. This view of sustainability can be said to be permitted by certain interpretations of the Swedish experience of becoming more sustainable. From this I conclude that to ensure that international cooperation for urban sustainability takes place on equal and fundamentally democratic terms, Swedish actors (and sustainability transition theorists alike) would do well to also encourage and facilitate inclusive and critical discussions of how urban sustainability can be understood, in the North as well as the South. The main limitation of this work lies in the actual engagement with the targeted cities, which prevents a thorough understanding of both the perceived and the actual impact of the export of Swedish urban sustainability. Further research should therefore pay attention to how it has affected the targeted cities.

There is an emerging market of radical eco-innovations that require high involvement from the U.S. consumer for successful routinization. Yet, there exists a gap in knowledge that guides the dissemination of such innovations for related stakeholders. Among these innovations is the household digester (HD), which is marketed as an innovation capable of generating biogas and fertilizer through processing organic waste at its point-of-source (POS). The HD may surpass other high-involvement eco-innovations in respect to levels of involvement necessary for consumer routinization and sustained operation. However, previously unexplored factors within the contemporary U.S. landscape have spurred recent growth in HD adoption. This dissertation took a three-manuscript approach in the investigation of factors that influence the adoption and diffusion of HD in the U.S. The first of three studies tested a literature-based conceptual model framed within the multi-level perspective (MLP) to identify barriers and drivers of HD adoption. Qualitative data from expert interviews and social media posts inform the production of a taxonomy of complexities that depict the current state of HD in the U.S. Findings indicate that HD marketing during the Covid pandemic brought forth new adopter populations seeking resilience due to infrastructure distrust. The second study investigated motivations for HD adoption through operationalizing constructs from psychology literature and diffusion of innovation theory (DOI). Through in-depth interviews with adopters, the factors of relative advantage, compatibility, and cost were found to outweigh pro-environmental behavior (PEB) in adoption decisions. Furthermore, high-involvement was not found to influence adoption decisions. The final study employed a collective case study approach that explored paths to HD routinization among ten adopters. Results highlight the ability of adopters to overcome technical challenges through reinventions necessary for contextual adaptations. This dissertation contributes insights into the adoption and diffusion of radical high-involvement eco-innovations, offering implications for policy, practice, and future research in emerging innovations interacting within socio-technical transitions. / Doctor of Philosophy / A variety of emerging products are entering the U.S. consumer market that promote household sustainability, many of which require high levels of involvement from consumers for successful adoption. These high-involvement eco-innovations have been studied within the context of electric cars, organic foods, and other products that require extensive consumer research before purchase. However, this research focuses on a new product entering the U.S. market where involvement not only requires extensive pre-purchase research but also radical levels of interaction during operation and maintenance for successful product use. The household anaerobic digester is an apparatus that turns organic waste into cooking fuel and fertilizer. This innovation has been widely adopted in the developing world with some success, but technical issues during operation have been shown to result in discontinued use. This dissertation focuses on the adoption of household digesters in the U.S. Radical high-involvement eco-innovations need further scientific analysis to understand what factors might affect adoption, as well as explore the viability of such products entering a market where convenience is a social norm. This research aims to provide an analysis of this phenomenon through three studies. Chapter Two explores this new product and factors that may hinder or accelerate adoption in the U.S. Experts in the field of household digesters are interviewed for data collection, as well as analysis of social media posts where new adopters share information. This study aims to determine the social and technical complexities of Americans adopting household digesters. The Third Chapter assesses the purchase motivations of current adopters of household digesters in the U.S. This assessment takes place through interviews, where consumers provide information about their traits, values, and the degree to which they use the product to replace an existing technology. Chapter Four takes a further look at adopters to gain an understanding of paths to adoption and commonly shared practices that are employed to be successful in the adoption of household digesters. This study first presents the stories of each adopter and then provides a cross-case analysis that reveals commonalities of adopters regarding how paths to adoption often lead to shared practices for successful HD operation. The work is summarized in Chapter Five with conclusions, lessons learned, and recommendations for future research. This includes drawing connections between the three studies' findings and how the studies' chronology brought forth validation in the instruments used for data collection.

In recent years, several nations have adopted institutional framework laws, so-called Climate Change Acts (CCAs), as means to enforce Paris-compliant mitigation pathways. A key institutional feature to ensure policy stability and compliance with CCAs has been the establishment of independent advisory bodies, tasked with advising on mitigation targets and policy instruments, as well as the, monitoring and evaluation of target attainment. These advisory bodies are endowed with a crucial role in the long-term evaluation and planning process: examining how the low-carbon transition pathways might be achieved. Calling attention to the question of how transition pathways should be conceived and approached, whether it is in 'bio-physical' (climate science), 'techno- economic' (technology assessment/economics) or 'socio-technical' (socio-technical transition field) terms. Recent studies have indicated that a socio-technical transitions is increasingly framed as a question of removing carbon energy from various practices and infrastructures, challenging the dominant techno-economic approach of emissions reductions using carbon-pricing instruments. This thesis explores this challenge, drawing upon a case study of the establishment of the Swedish Climate Policy Council, by means of analyzing the process of institutionalization and how transition pathways are (re)produced discursively through the practices of climate policy evaluation and planning. The main findings of this thesis is that a cross-party consensus behind the Swedish CCA was formed around institutionalizing a 'bio-physical’ mitigation pathway, monitored and safeguarded by the Council which could assign 'political embarrassment' to governments failing to comply with the interim and long-term GHG mitigation targets. Beyond this consensus, the institutional design of the Council is the result of discursive struggles between actor-coalitions supporting techno-economic versus socio-technical transition pathways. However, the recently formed Council has come to challenge previously dominant techno-economic practices of forecasting cost-efficient emissions reductions. This has been accomplished by introducing a novel socio-technical approach to climate policy evaluation: the backcasting of interrelated technological and institutional shifts believed to be necessary in bringing about a low-carbon transition or transformation. Nevertheless, as this socio-technical practice primarily backcasts upon a number of key technological innovations, with limited changes to current industrial patterns of production and consumption, doubts are raised if this approach is to be considered as constitutive of transformative transition pathways.

Two of the global megatrends today are the green and digital transition. Climate change, loss of biodiversity, and an increasing scarcity of resources coincide with rapid technological development which is fundamentally altering societies. Acknowledging the importance of this topic, the purpose of this study was to investigate how six large companies in Sweden perceive the potential of the new EU twin strategy which seeks to converge the green and digital transition. Through six semi-structured in depth-interviews, the study investigates how prepared these companies are for the twin transition, what challenges and opportunities they perceive with the EU twin strategy, and how their perceptions could be put in a broader context. The result shows that the companies perceived the twin strategy in a positive light, although only 1 out of 6 companies were aware of the twin strategy before the interviews. The potential of the twin strategy was often expressed in terms of creating new business opportunities while reducing environmental impact. The results indicate that the companies are more prepared for the twin transition in some areas and less in others, where the main identified challenges relate to implementation of technology and regulations, management of supply chains, digital maturity, balancing goals and values, and ensuring return from green and digital investments. / Två av de globala megatrenderna idag är den gröna och digitala omställningen. Klimatförändringar, förlust av biologisk mångfald och en ökande knapphet på resurser sammanfaller med den snabba tekniska utvecklingen som håller på att förändra samhällen i grunden. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur sex stora företag i Sverige uppfattar potentialen i EU:s nya tvillingstrategi som syftar till att förena den gröna och digitala omställningen, med tanke på vikten av detta ämne. Genom sex semistrukturerade djupintervjuer undersöker studien hur förberedda dessa företag är för tvillingövergången, vilka utmaningar och möjligheter de ser med EU:s tvillingstrategi och hur deras uppfattningar skulle kunna sättas in i ett bredare sammanhang. Resultatet visar att företagen uppfattar tvillingstrategin i ett positivt ljus, även om endast 1 av 6 företag kände till tvillingstrategin innan intervjuerna. Potentialen i tvillingstrategin uttrycktes ofta i termer av att skapa nya affärsmöjligheter och samtidigt minska miljöpåverkan. Resultaten tyder på att företagen är mer förberedda för tvillingövergången inom vissa områden och mindre inom andra, där de främsta identifierade utmaningarna handlar om implementering av teknik och regelverk, hantering av försörjningskedjor, digital mognad, balansering av mål och värderingar samt säkerställande av avkastning från gröna och digitala investeringar.

[pt] Com uma crescente preocupação mundial com as emissões de gases de efeito estufa ( e seus impactos na saúde humana e no meio ambiente, o transporte passa a ser um tema central sendo responsável por 14 porcento das emissões humanas de GEE. A fim de construir resistência às mudanças climáticas os serviços de transporte devem não só se adaptar ao cenário atual, mas também agir rapidamente para evitar mudanças futuras. Mudanças profundamente enraizadas nos sistemas socio técnicos serão necessárias para alcançar uma redução significativa de CO 2 e garantir o bem estar das gerações futuras. Os objetivos deste estudo são ( alcançar uma visão abrangente do estado atual da mitigação de carbono no setor de transporte e ( contribuir para o cenário de sustentabilidade atual, aumentando a conscientização entre acadêmicos e profissionais. Isso é feito através de uma revisão sistemática da literatura, com base nas teorias de transições socio técnicas e contingência, e por meio do desenvolvimento de uma calculadora de CO 2 Vinte e um artigos de revisão são selecionados para leitura de texto completo na área de emissões de carbono em transporte. Habilitadores, barreiras, benefícios, desvantagens e métricas sobre o tópico são identificados e um framework é construído Os resultados fornecem uma visão do cenário atual de sustentabilidade em transportes e permitem um melhor entendimento dos fatores que influenciam a redução de emissões de carbono retratados na literatura existente. Um aplicativo móvel iOS é desenvolvido para estimar as emissões de CO2. O aplicativo está disponível para download na App Store com o nome de Calculadora de Emissões de Carbono. Uma simulação de planejamento de cenário é oferecida, mostrando os usos potenciais do produto tecnológico. O software também será submetido a registro no instituto brasileiro do INPI. / [en] With a worldwide growing concern for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their impact on human health and the environment, transportation becomes a central theme in mitigation, being responsible for 14 percent of human GHG emissions. In order to build endurance to climate change, transportation services must not only adapt to the current scenario, but also act quickly to avert future changes. Deeply rooted changes in socio-technical systems will be necessary to achieve significant CO2 reduction and secure the wellbeing of future generations. The objectives of this study are to (1) achieve a comprehensive view of the current state of carbon mitigation in the transportation sector and (2) contribute to the current sustainability scenario by raising awareness among scholars and practitioners. This is done thorough a systematic literature review, engrained in the socio-technical transition theory and in the structural theory of contingency, and through the development of a CO2 calculator. Twenty-one review papers are selected for full-text examination in the area of carbon emissions in transportation. Enablers, barriers, benefits, disadvantages and metrics in carbon emissions reduction are identified and a comprehensive framework is built. Results provide a view of the current scenario of sustainability in transportation and allow a better understanding of the factors influencing carbon emission initiatives in transportation, as well as its outcomes. A mobile iOS app is developed to estimate CO2 emissions. The app is available for download at the App Store under the name of LogCO2: Carbon Emissions Calculator. A scenario planning simulation is offered, showing potential uses of the technological product. The software will also be submitted for registration at the Brazilian INPI institute.

Achieving a transition to sustainability and decrease the environmental impact of building is part of Sweden's sustainability goals. Authorities and policy makers have a big responsibility to promote and facilitate this transition, but how this is to be achieved is not as readily answered. Using the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions, this thesis investigates the conditions for sustainability transitions in Swedish building by learning from the case of earthen and straw home builders. Qualitative mixed methods research, including questionnaires and semi-structured interviews was carried out to explore drivers and barriers for innovative sustainable building in Sweden. Findings suggest that there are barriers for innovative sustainable building in Sweden that might slow down the sustainability transition process, not in terms of regulation but in practices and norms in the current socio-technical regime.