Upscaling Sustainable Technology

Dear Colleagues,

The conversion of innovative sustainable technologies that work on paper into fully functioning examples increases the likelihood that these innovations will eventually become widely accepted and implemented. The strength of developing and introducing real-world examples of innovative sustainable technologies lies in presenting the characteristics and potential of these technologies to future users [1]. Past experience shows that such examples, often developed as demonstrations or in experimental projects and programs, become the first step in the commercialization of sustainable energy technologies [2].

These experimental and demonstrative projects and programs can be understood as settings in which governmental authorities cooperate with academia and commercial firms to further test, comprehend, and improve upon new sustainable technologies before they develop to the point at which they can be commercially exploited [3–5]. Such sustainable technologies are modified or all-new processes, techniques, practices, systems, and products that are developed to generate, harvest, convert, store, transport, and operationalize energy in ways that avoid or reduce environmental harm. Projects and programs that develop these technologies bridge the gap between technological development, on one side, and market acceptance, on the other [6,7]. The primary innovation trajectory followed is that scientific knowledge on sustainability is transformed into working sustainable technology solutions in the laboratory. This technology is then introduced into an ever-expanding set of practical situations beyond the laboratory through one or several consecutive experimental and demonstrative projects and programs [8,9], making it part of niche markets [10–12], and is thus allowed to grow further—possibly even becoming a dominant technology across large conventional markets and society [13].

However, in practice, assumptions such as these often need to be revised. Even sustainable energy technologies demonstrated in laboratory enviroenments repeatedly fail to achieve upscaling targets, perhaps due to technical problems or due to markets that are not ready for their adoption [14]. In such circumstances, projects and programs driving experiments and technology demonstrators can contribute to evaluating innovative sustainable technologies, their applications, and the needed production technologies, but scaling up—that is, increasing the implementation of an innovative sustainable technology [15,16]—can still fail to take place [17]. By way of illustration, in their evaluation of 14,000 completed European Union-subsidized renewable energy demonstration projects, Bandaru et al. [18] concluded that only 0.1 % of these projects led to urban scale-up. The continuous starting-up of new experimental and demonstrative projects, without scaling them up is aptly termed the ‘projectification’ of sustainable technology development [17].

Another commonly reported problem with sustainable technology experiments and demonstrations is referred to as the ‘valley of death’ [19], which describes the process according to which, after a government has subsidized several experimental and demonstrative projects and programs, it halts the subsidizing to allow the market to take the subsequent steps toward commercialization, and it turns out that the markets fail to make the significant investments needed, causing the sustainable technology to ‘die’ for the time being [20,21].

An additional problem is known as the ‘technology pork barrel’ [22,23], in which the government has decided to continue investing in several sustainable technologies. Yet, on closer inspection, these sustainable technologies turn out to be the ‘losers’ compared to other emerging technologies in the same sectors [20].

The road from the experimental and technology demonstrator stage to upscaling is not, therefore, a matter of course. Furthermore, much attention is paid to experiments and demonstrators, and little knowledge and experience are invested in how to speed up and organize the process of moving from specialized experiments and demonstrations to everyday large-scale implementation. In cases where a demonstrated sustainable technology is scaled up—where projectification is avoided, the valley of death is overcome, and the pitfall of the technology pork barrel is circumvented—great deals of time, money, and patience are required. By way of example, experiments and demonstrations with wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) cells first began in the 1970s. Today, more than fifty years later, wind turbines and PV cells are finally becoming integrated into the global energy network [24–26].

Although sustainable technology experiments and demonstration projects and programs are being set up with a view to being scaled up in the near future, more is demanded from the world of scientific research regarding how this scaling-up process is to take place or why it is being delayed or obstructed [3,27]. For instance, recent review studies into the usefulness and effectiveness of renewable energy technology demonstrations show how they result in learning experiences that contribute to upscaling [3,4,28], but they also indicate that upscaling itself needs to be investigated. Scaling up from experimental and demonstration projects and programs is a complex issue where technological, social, and societal influencing factors come together [29–31]. This is an important topic to study [7,12,17,32].

Given the knowledge gaps outlined above, the research presented in this Special Issue focuses on identifying the factors that support the upscaling of sustainable technologies from their experimental and demonstrator stages to more extensive, general, and conventional areas of implementation. The central research question is, ‘which factors support the upscaling of sustainable technologies?’

Contributions to this Special Issue should include, but are not limited to:

• University–industry–government cooperation and co-innovation;
• The economics of the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• The social side of the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Stimulation programs for the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• International cooperation and alignment for the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Knowledge, learning, and institutionalization for the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Government policy for the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Market formation for the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Marketing approaches that support the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• User innovation supporting the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Transition approaches supporting the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• Business models for the upscaling of sustainable technologies;
• The upscaling of sustainable technologies in (smart) cities and urban environments.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

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Prof. Dr. Bart A. G. Bossink
Dr. Sandra Hasanefendic
Guest Editors

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• sustainable technology
• sustainability upscaling
• sustainable technological innovation
• sustainable technological transition