TIPPING+: decarbonizing Coal and Carbon Intensive Regions

Enabling positive tipping points towards clean-energy transitions in coal and carbon intensive regions

The aim of TIPPING⁺ is to generate a unique transdisciplinary social science analytical framework to respond to the following intertwined questions:

• Why at one or several points in time Coal and Carbon Intensive Regions (CCIRs) flip into fundamentally different development trajectories and embrace low carbon, clean-energy transformations?

• What are the actual effects of such fundamental changes on the livelihoods and the sustainability of regional economies and social-ecological systems?

• How can the knowledge from the recent past about the multiple social-ecological processes leading to sudden and fundamental changes in these regions be used to identify the most effective tipping interventions that enact low-carbon, clean-energy transitions in other regions?

TIPPING⁺ produces a step-wise advance in the scientific understanding of the critical concept of Social-Ecological Tipping Points (SETPs) to show how a much more robust and empirically-grounded theory of SETPs can be applied to support successful clean-energy transitions in CCIRs.

For more information, visit the project webiste: https://tipping-plus.eu/

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 884565

Aim and scope:
The overall goal of TIPPING.plus is to understand why and under which conditions a given social-ecological regional system heavily dependent on coal and carbon-intensive activities may flip into a low-carbon, clean energy development trajectory – or on the contrary may fall into an opposite trajectory with all its negative implications.

Project Partners:
– Institute for Environmental Decisions Technical University of Zurich (Switzerland)
– Centre for Environmental Psychology Research Sapienza University of Roma (Italy)
– Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (Germany)
– Paris School of Economics (France)
– Nordland Research Institute (Norway)
– Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change University of Gaz (Austria)
– TeesLab University of Piraeus (Greece)
– Palacky University (Czech Republic)
– WesPort Consulting (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
– National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania)
– Institute for Structural Research (Poland)
– Aalborg University (Denmark)
– Su.Re.Co (Indonesia)