Abstract
Academic and public debates have long explored post-growth and sufficiency to ensure societal well-being within planetary boundaries. Recently, these debates increasingly relate to industrial policy. Despite growing interest in economic change, actionable pathways to integrate into industrial policy remain fragmented. Addressing this fragmentation, this paper synthesises the legitimations, opportunities, and barriers for integrating post-growth and sufficiency strategies in industrial policy, with a focus on energy-intensive industries in Europe. Following the RepOrting Standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses (ROSES), we conducted a systematic mapping, screening 2,084 academic and grey literature sources to identify a corpus of 64 relevant academic and grey literature studies. Our analysis yields the following findings: The primary goal of implementing post-growth and sufficiency is to reduce energy and resource utilisation while increasing the well-being of societies. The democratisation of decisionmaking is identified as a foundational prerequisite, and the literature emphasises the need to reduce disproportionate corporate influence and to democratically define basic needs while pursuing global ecological justice. Implementation of post-growth and sufficiency follows two main approaches: first, a sector-based approach prioritising sectors meeting basic needs while phasing out those enabling excessive consumption. The second approach focuses on imposing resource, energy, or product 'corridors' across the value chain. To ensure socioeconomic stability, the literature suggests the need to address rebound effects and facilitate a just transition shifting labour towards sectors meeting basic needs. We conclude with a critical discussion of the practical challenges of applying these strategies to current industrial policy frameworks.