Why sustainability transitions are starting to accelerate via technical innovations but not through social innovations: five reasons and some critiques of transformations research

Non-technical summary Addressing environmental problems like climate change urgently requires the acceleration of sustainability transitions. This Intelligence Briefing explains why this is starting to happen for technical innovations like renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles. Drawing on socio-technical transitions theory, it discusses five acceleration mechanisms that reduce cost, improve performance, change actor orientations, mobilise finance, and increase socio-political support. While not denying their potential relevance, the Briefing also shows that these acceleration mechanisms are not (yet) being activated for social innovations and deep lifestyle change. The Briefing, therefore, also criticises wishful thinking tendencies in some sustainability transformation research strands. Technical summary Sustainability transitions should accelerate to address environmental problems like climate change and biodiversity loss. This Intelligence Briefing aims to explain the empirical phenomenon that rapid transitions are starting to happen with regard to several low-carbon technologies (like solar-PV, wind, and electric vehicles), but not with regard to transformative social innovations or lifestyle changes. It identifies and discusses five reasons that help explain this difference: increasing-returns-to-adoption mechanisms; socio-technical feedbacks between technology, actors, and institutions; financial reorientation; issue linkage to wider political goals; and societal acceptance. It further suggests that technical innovations can act as a flywheel or catalyst for subsequent social innovations. And it makes critical comparisons between the socio-technical transitions literature and some approaches in the transformations literature, finding the former more theoretically developed, empirically validated, and policy relevant than the latter for the topic of acceleration. Social media summary Low-carbon technologies are starting to accelerate sustainability transitions, while purely social innovations linger.