Enabling Positive Tipping Points towards clean-energy transitions in Coal and Carbon Intensive Regions

Why at one or several points in time do Coal and Carbon Intensive Regions (CCIR) flip into fundamentally different development trajectories and embrace clean-energy transformations? TIPPING+ will focus on the critical concept of Social-Ecological Tipping Points (SETPs) to inquire how a much more robust scientific understanding of the socioeconomic, psychological, cultural, gender and political processes leading to SETPs can be used to support clean-energy transitions in CCIR or prevent catastrophic or undesirable outcomes in other ones (e.g. populism and anti-democratic attitudes).

TIPPING.plus  will carry out empirical analyses and advance the state-of-the-art on both negative and positive tipping points. A main focus will concern the participatory co-production of knowledge on the driving forces and deliberate tipping interventions for positive tipping points toward energy transitions in European CCIR. A typology based on at least 20 regional case studies will be generated with an early engagement of key practitioners examining: i) New trends, changes and impacts of energy transitions on demographic structures and geographical distribution patterns; ii) Community, gender and psychological factors related to energy transitions; iii) Policy interventions and governance factors, and iv) Economic transformations on employment, distributional welfare and energy and natural resources.

Eco-union specifically undertakes the research on two regional case studies based in Spain and co-leads the stakeholder engagement of the whole consortium.

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