This paper addresses the question of how alignment dynamics between niche and regime actors shape niche acceleration. We develop a conceptual framework that focuses on the role of expectations as a necessary precondition and even as a key proxy for strategic collaboration between niche and regime actors. Based on actors’ expectations, we conceptualise three alignment patterns of strong, medium-strong and weak alignment. We propose a 16 % threshold of niche technology adoption for substantial niche acceleration. We explore our conceptual framework in two contrasting case studies of wind and solar power development in China between 2000 and 2017. Both cases experienced niche acceleration but followed different paths. Our research findings indicate that the three proposed alignment patterns between niche and regime actors’ expectations can be seen as a good proxy for explaining these different paths. Strong alignment between niche and regime actors’ expectations does go hand in hand with niche acceleration.

Techno-economic modelling is an important tool in evidence-building, futures assessment and decision-making in policy for socio-technical systems. However, critical assessment of the fit of sophisticated models into a decision-making context is often hidden or overlooked. Using the case of a national infrastructure systems model, this paper connects conceptions of infrastructure governance to techno-economic modelling assessing future infrastructure performance. Analysis of modelling input to a UK national level infrastructure policy process demonstrates the importance of governance understanding within infrastructure modelling for policy and it highlights the risks of not explicitly considering governance assumptions. Going on to pursue a more integrated approach to infrastructure modelling and governance, socio-technical researchers embedded within a model development research project are able to observe model development, analyse an early policy application, and facilitate discussions and co-development work with modellers. A methodological framework, building on recent transitions research ‘bridging’ socio-technical and techno-economic approaches, for connecting infrastructure governance understanding into techno-economic modelling analyses is presented and its use within this UK infrastructure modelling project is discussed. The integrated approach taken and the methodological framework developed are potential tools for researchers working with techno-economic models to support policy decisions; they show potential for further research on infrastructure futures.

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of the different types of innovations in digital energy services business models in the UK, and examine how they create and capture social and economic values, to users and the energy system. Business model innovations are represented in an Innovation Ladder to aid understanding of what social and environmental values they create and capture. Using a co-evolutionary framework, the paper unpacks the way technology, users, institutions, business strategies and ecosystems underpin the characteristics of business models at each level of the Innovation Ladder and examines the role of collective action and institutional density in negotiating the values created and captured for users and the energy system.

The paper uncovers two important value gaps, which question the ability of digital energy service business models to deliver more social and environmental value. The higher up business models are in the Innovation Ladder, the more value they create for the energy system but fewer benefits for users. The higher up business models are in the Innovation Ladder, the more abstract and limited the articulation of social and environmental values, exposing a weak link between digital innovations and the social and environmental values created and captured. Addressing these value gaps could contribute to achieving a successful transition to a net zero carbon energy system.

This paper uses historical analysis to explore the evolution of interdependencies between the electricity and information and communication technology (ICT) sectors in the UK. It explores the role of governance in shaping the interface between these two sectors, and subsequent implications for smart grid innovation. The analysis focuses on three periods between 1940 and 2016, with distinct institutional logics: state ownership, privatisation, and transitions to sustainability.

The interactions between the electricity and ICT sectors are analysed through Raven and Verbong’ (2007) typology: competition, symbiosis, integration and spill-over, drawing on social-technical transitions theories and discussed in terms of rules and institutions; actors and networks; and technology, artefacts and infrastructures of socio-technical regimes.

The paper finds that a way to encourage more spill-overs and integration between the electricity and the ICT sector is through a more symmetrical and integrated governance approach that takes into account the needs and characteristics of both sectors.

A key theme within the delivery of next generation infrastructure, in the UK and around the world, can be a focus upon the provision of infrastructure services rather than upon reinforcing existing technologically centred systems (e.g. appropriate mobility rather than a series of transport systems). This user-centred approach to infrastructure offers the potential to remove some of the assumptions and inefficiencies present in the existing bounding of infrastructure provision within sectoral siloes. However, it also presents challenges over infrastructure decision-making and governance arrangements. One way to work with the complexity involved in navigating interdependencies between systems is the use of modelling tools to examine the effects of infrastructure needs across sectors. However, the centralised, birds-eye view possible within techno-economic infrastructure models is rarely reproduced within infrastructure governance. In practice, except in a very local context, the information processing and knowledge requirements, as well as a need to create checks and balances and meaningful connections to key stakeholders, would overwhelm the capacity of centralised, single point decisionmaking. The reality of decision making about infrastructures is that it is complex and distributed involving many actors and levels of authority. As a result, an awareness of the remits, priorities and processes of actors that are shaping both the performance requirements and development decisions taken in infrastructure is an important corollary to centralised techno-economic modelling analysis. The research presented here brings together modelling and governance thinking on infrastructure decision-making. This paper takes a governance perspective to analyse the use of the NISMOD model developed by the Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC) within the National Needs Assessment (NNA) process concluded in 2016. The different strategies explored within the NNA process and used to structure the use of the NISMOD model are analysed to consider what they could mean for governance – what governance processes are assumed? What requirements might these strategies place upon governance actors? This analysis is illustrated for three UK infrastructure sectors: Energy, Transport and Water. This paper highlights limitations within the application of this infrastructure model from a governance perspective. It also identifies several key areas of opportunity for improved treatment of governance within the modelling process. Further, points for the potential development of co-constituted modelling and governance analysis are suggested. This work is the first step in exploring possibilities for the systematic and rigorous incorporation and use of governance knowledge within infrastructure modelling.

The fragmented, complex, and disconnected nature of arrangements within and between infrastructure sectors, along with increasing interdependence between sectors, is reshaping business models of infrastructure based services, prompting the emergence of new approaches to regulation and governance. Drawing on research experience in several infrastructure sectors and reflecting upon a series of workshops, the discussion focuses on emerging issues for the regulation and governance of infrastructure based services. A series of observations from across UK infrastructure are presented, and discussed within an international context. Three emerging areas of change in infrastructure delivery are highlighted: 1) a shift from asset-focused to service-focused delivery, 2) increased cross-sector interaction and 3) changing relationships with(in) the supply chain. The presented argument is that while regulatory changes are gradually pushing the boundaries of existing arrangements, infrastructure governance has seen more extensive changes through the introduction of more and non-traditional actors; and platforms and means for coordination between (public and private) actors. The shift in focus to infrastructure service provision supports the case for improved cross-sector co-ordination, recognising infrastructure services as a bundled consumer good, and address challenges that are common across sectors, such as climate change. Digital platforms provide opportunities to engage directly with consumers and understand the aggregate value and impacts of bundled infrastructure services. Across sectors, there are opportunities and requirements for closer, more open and responsive relationships between infrastructure providers and regulators, which challenge existing imperatives for regulatory independence and certainty. Focusing on infrastructure provision, policy-making and regulation in the UK and internationally, we bring to light recent innovations, tensions and opportunities for the future of infrastructure provision in the UK.

This paper uses a business model framework to discuss how principles of energy justice - in particular, equitable distribution of costs and benefits, affordability, due process and greater participation in decision-making - can be embedded in business model innovations for energy, through social innovation. The paper discusses four cases at different scales (local, subnational, regional and global) to highlight opportunities for introducing principles of energy justice into the core of business models of companies. By doing so, the paper offers a critical perspective on the potential of business model innovation to be guided through a more broadly defined understanding of value enhanced by concepts of energy justice. The discussion of the four case studies— the Carbon Cooperative, Robin Hood Energy, RenEsco, and the Yansa Community Interest Company—highlights the importance of creating supportive wider environments for social and business model innovations, such as the development of skills, knowledge and social capital, through interventions coming from multiple levels and focused on different aspects of energy generation, supply and use (i.e. finance and technical implementation). Going against the grain of current policy, the study implies a shift away from upscaling innovations by taking them to the national scale, and towards creating supportive conditions for more local deals in different geographic locations.

Policy note based on 3 policy and industry workshops in 2014 and 2015.

The European Union (EU) and member states alike are following a tradition of addressing fuel poverty and vulnerability at the point of purchase by final consumers
by seeking to influence the impact of income, energy price and the built environment on the ability of household consumers to access the energy that they need. By focusing on the conditions of energy transmission in the most rapidly growing renewable electricity sector in the UK – offshore wind – this paper aims to question
whether the regulatory socio-technological framing of renewable electricity transmission is reproducing conditions for fuel poverty and vulnerability in the UK.
By drawing a comparison with renewable electricity transmission in Bulgaria, this paper argues that the problem might be symptomatic of the EU as a whole. While not arguing against the proliferation of renewable electricity and its importance in meeting the 2020 targets, this paper calls for expanding the scope of fuel poverty alleviation policy throughout the whole renewable electricity supply chain, building on Helm’s argument that energy companies at the middle of the supply chain are better suited to deliver fuel policy.

Bulgaria is a significant natural gas transit state in the EU (a role set to increase with the South Stream and potential Nabucco West gas pipelines) and a Member State subject to EU regulation. As a result, the regulation of natural gas in the country is of direct relevance to the development, implementation and realisation of EU energy security policy. However, the transposition of the EU’s Third Energy package seem to be dependent on the role of intermediaries in the process of transiting natural gas through and within Bulgaria. This paper uses a conceptual frame which merges literature on energy infrastructure networks, intermediaries and power to explain some key problems for natural gas supply policy in Bulgaria and the lack of transparency within the sector. The conclusion offers an explanation of how the existence of Bulgarian intermediaries influences the use of national natural gas pipelines as transmission belts for national, Russian and EU policy, as well as a series of objectives including: increasing household gasification, further liberalisation of the Bulgarian natural gas market and increasing transparency in Bulgarian energy policy.