Orchestrating place-based micro-missions: the grand challenge of decarbonisation at Shoreham Port

Climate change has led governments to adopt mission-oriented policies targeting net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Heavy industry accounts for almost one-sixth of global emissions, making industrial decarbonisation central to this agenda. Though emissions impacts are global, decarbonisation unfolds locally. Yet how place-based micro-missions – small-scale experimental initiatives targeting concrete, localised challenges – are orchestrated in practice remains poorly understood. Examining Shoreham Port, an English industrial cluster in West Sussex, we show how local actors coordinate multi-scalar governance through spatially embedded micro-missions, demonstrating that their coordinated orchestration is essential for place-based industrial transformation, advancing mission-oriented innovation theory by establishing orchestration as a constitutive governance capacity and clarifying how grand challenges can be effectively addressed in local contexts.