Browsing by Subject "sustainability transition"
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(2022)Urban energy transitions play a key role in achieving climate targets and keeping the climate crisis from escalating. The district heating system of Helsinki has been characterised as a path-dependent and locked in system that will face difficulties in transitioning away from fossil fuels. In 2021 the city owned energy company Helen announced that it will quit coal burning in 2024, which is five years ahead of the national coal ban prohibiting coal use for energy in 2029. The coal phase out of Helsinki is a concrete example of a demanding coal phase out in a northern city with high energy demand. This thesis aims at answering the research question on how the multilevel policy mix, consisting of policy instruments on the municipal level, the national level, and the international level, contributed to the coal phase out of Helsinki. Through a case study approach relying on ten expert and stakeholder interviews as well as complementary material consisting of key strategy documents, this thesis aims to widen the understanding of the role of policy and politics in sustainability transitions and urban energy transitions. This study covers both policymaking and implementation processes as well as system impacts of the policy mix contributing to the coal phase out of Helsinki. Through empirical reviews the thesis contributes to the conceptualisation of policy mixes on multiple governance levels by studying the combined impact of policy instruments formed at the local, national, and international level. Regulatory policies on the national and international level (emissions trading, national ban on coal, taxation etc.), policies supporting low-carbon solutions on the national level (tax-exemptions) and climate target setting as well as support for low-carbon solutions on the municipal level (deregulation, innovation competitions) altogether contributed to the coal phase out. The findings of this study are in line with previous research emphasising the destabilisation of fossil fuel regimes to achieve transitions towards sustainability. Incorporating the elements of policy processes and strategies as well as policy effects and feedbacks into the concept of policy mixes is important to assess the efficacy and long-term impacts of policy mixes. The coherence of policies on multiple governance levels and the balance between regime destabilising and niche creating policies is also important in ensuring transitions towards sustainability. The results of this study support previous research findings on cities being important arenas and actors for sustainability transitions. Policies from different governance levels intersect on the urban level and decisions on infrastructure transformation are made on the municipal level.
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(2022)This thesis aimed to systematically map and review built environment low carbon and/or social justice experiments in Finland and understand how municipalities engage in experimentation and what challenges municipalities face when engaging in it. To find what forms of experiments for socially just low carbon buildings and housing can be found in Finland, 1 386 objects in 15 databases were systematically mapped. 204 unique built environment low carbon and/or social justice experiments were recognized and further reviewed. Municipality engagements and challenges in experimentation were approached through a case study of four Finnish municipalities Helsinki, Joensuu, Turku, and Vantaa. 14 case city officials and other persons working with experimentation were interviewed, and 1 839 pages of case-city-related documents were gathered. Triangulation was used to analyze the interview transcripts and additional documents in an abductive manner to find what kind of policy engagements for experimentation municipalities participated in and what kind of challenges the municipality representatives identified when doing so. This thesis discovered that there is a large focus on building and nurturing niches and testing technologies with a lack of focus on profound social justice and the behavioral side of the sustainability transitions. The sustainability experimentation in the built environment was technology-focused and lacked profound social justice aspects. Even though there were some overlaps between low carbon and social justice in the experiments, the experiments did not seek to increase social justice but rather to do low carbon in a socially just way. Municipalities strongly focused on building and nurturing niches and experimentation as a process. Municipalities did not do much experimentation in their operations and focused on the experimentation process rather than the subject matter. Also, the municipality experimentation engagements were characterized by a lack of novelty, flexibility, and uncertainty. This thesis also reveals that the links between sustainability experimentation and sustainability transitions may not be as straightforward as the scientific models and frameworks present. Though this thesis made several findings about sustainability experimentation, there remains a particularly urgent need to develop and conduct additional studies. They are needed to understand better the phenomena in the socially just low carbon experimentation in the built environment to enable just transition to low carbon buildings and housing.
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