Adrian Rinscheid

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.

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.

The transformation towards a sustainable agri-food system is a complex challenge involving numerous actors from various levels with different interests, values and backgrounds. While the problems of the current system are well understood, it is less clear how a transformation towards a more sustainable system state might be achieved. This research project entitled “Value assessment to support a collaborative food system transition” aims to understand what determines actors’ choices and behaviors related to the agri-food system. It does so by focusing on the role of stakeholders’ values. The underlying theory of change is rooted in sociological and psychological research, which has shown that specific values and broader value systems guide the way in which people give meaning to phenomena and events and pre-structure courses of action. In the empirical examination of values, this project focuses on stakeholders involved in or close to policy-making processes related to the Dutch agri-food system. This includes actors as diverse as producer organizations, public institutions, consultancy firms, agricultural cooperatives, banks, agribusinesses, researchers, and others. This value assessment provides the unique opportunity to discover the cognitive maps of stakeholders more broadly. Therefore, in addition to the main focus on values, the survey also inquires into stakeholders’ general views on the state of the Dutch food system and their preferences for specific policy proposals. In this way, it is also possible to investigate whether similar coalitions of actors emerge on the basis of latent environmental or food-related values on the one hand and specific policy preferences on the other.

We introduce the Transformation Flower Approach (TFA), a Theory of Change that attends to multiple value creation and institutional change as a dual design challenge. We highlight how the TFA integrates social scientific theories and models relevant for transformative change (in particular focusing on pathways, leverage points, governance, power, and values) and demonstrate its practical value by an application to the ongoing transformation of the Dutch food system. By providing a holistic, transdisciplinary and practically relevant approach that aims to support new social contract formation, the TFA goes beyond other transformative change approaches. Based on the notion of pathways, it offers a toolbox that aids in working towards desired futures, involving both incumbents and challengers in an effort to harness untapped yet proximal potentials in a forward-looking way. By embracing an innovation approach, it not only promises to circumvent resistance to change, but also serves as a step-by-step approach to identify options for multiple value creation and effective cooperation. We demonstrate the analytical and practical value of the TFA by discussing action perspectives at various levels and scales in the context of the Dutch food system transition, including (1) area-oriented approaches, (2) acceleration agendas for specific transformation pathways, and (3) actor-specific transformation flowers. In developing these, we emphasize the importance of interdependencies between leverage points. Our approach helps to identify opportunities to link transformative options (the what), actors (the who) and levers (the how) in dynamic interaction to embark on transformative pathways.

After the internal combustion engine was the dominant technology in the automotive industry for more than a century, a transition to electric cars is now under way. However, not all car manufacturers seem equally determined to move away from fossil fuels. Based on a comparative case study of German automakers, we discuss some underlying factors associated with variation in electrification strategies. Conceptually, we focus on firms' dynamic capabilities—in particular, their ability to sense low‐carbon risks and opportunities in a changing business environment. Building on qualitative interviews, we gauge sensing capabilities through industry executives' cognitive frames. Our analysis reveals striking differences in the way executives perceive the opportunities and risks associated with electric mobility. In particular, firms' dynamic capabilities to shape the low‐carbon transition are tied to their conceptions of consumer preferences and the economics of the transition, their perception of network embeddedness, prior experiences with technological innovation, and leadership.

How do the impacts of acute crises influence citizens’ willingness to support different types of climate measures? An acute crisis can be understood either as an impediment or as an opportunity for climate change mitigation. In the first perspective, crisis impacts would create negative spill-overs and dampen citizens’ willingness to support climate action, while in the second perspective, the opposite would occur. Based on a survey experiment fielded in Germany in 2022 (n = 5438), we find that the economic implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War do not decrease behavioral willingness, while restrictions of civil liberties to combat the COVID-19 pandemic lead to higher climate support, underpinning the crisis-as-opportunity perspective. Willingness to support climate measures is strongest among (1) those most concerned about climate change, and (2) those who trust the government. We conclude that individuals do not wish climate change mitigation to be deprioritized on the back of other crises.

‘Phase-out’ is increasingly mobilised in research and policymaking as an approach to catalyse the gradual decline of technologies, substances and practices that compromise environmental sustainability objectives. This trend is particularly pronounced in the context of climate change, demonstrated by the accumulation of a vast body of scholarship over multiple decades. Our work provides the first systematic review of the state of this knowledge, mapping out how phase-out is studied and employed as a policy tool for mitigating climate change. We systematically review over 400 publications, spanning three decades (1990–2021) and diverse scientific fields. Our review asks: how has scholarly work discussed phase-out as an approach to mitigate climate change, and how has this changed over time? We tackle this question from five perspectives: (a) elements targeted by phase-outs, (b) policy instruments, (c) affected industries, (d) geographic context, and (e) benefits besides climate change mitigation. Results reveal that phase-out has widely proliferated as a decarbonisation approach, developing into a bridging concept that links diverse communities of contemporary science and practice. This is reflected by engagement with manifold phase-out targets—stretching well beyond the usual suspects related to fossil fuels and end-use technologies—as well as discussion of a growing diversity of industries, policy instruments and geographies in the literature. This global proliferation of phase-outs is propelled by expectations of diverse co-benefits. Aside from gains for the environment, economy, society and health, we find widespread acknowledgment that phase-out can drive innovation and systemic change beyond the mere substitution of problematic technologies and materials. Our study also identifies several underdeveloped and underrepresented directions meriting further study. These notably include phase-out activity beyond Europe, North America and China, hard-to-abate industry sectors and non-fossil fuel targets. We conclude by carving out broader implications for scholars and practitioners to inform future research directions and climate mitigation efforts.