Capacity and Disruption – what do they MEAN?

Nowt like having to give a presentation in a job interview (wish me luck) for focusing your reading…. (see last few blog posts).

Two super useful empirical-and-conceptual papers worth giving a shout out to.

First

Johnstone, Phil, Rogge, Karoline S, Kivimaa, Paula, Fratini, Chiara F, Primmer, Eeva and Stirling, Andy (2019) Waves of disruption in clean energy transitions: sociotechnical dimensions of system disruption in Germany and the United Kingdom. Energy Research & Social Science, 59. pp. 1-13. ISSN 2214-6296 [researchgate]

In the same way that whenever I hear the word “science” being used I want to ask (and sometimes do) “do you mean production science or impact science?” whenever I hear the word disruption in future I am (likely to be) asking “which do you mean – technology, ownership and actors, markets and business models or regulation?”

Probably won’t make me popular, (nobody likes a smartarse) but will at least focus the discussion (?!)

Second, I’m enjoying

Kuzemko, C. and Britton, J. 2020. Policy, politics and materiality across scales: A framework for understanding local government sustainable energy capacity applied in England. Energy Research & Social Science 62 (2020) 101367

They point out that “Capacity is, essentially, about having access to, and using, the various resources and skills available, whilst recognising that they may change over time” before giving us this super-useful table.

Again, useful for thinking with, perhaps especially in relation to the Active Citizenship Toolkit, which is all about the capacity…