Direction and legitimation in system upscaling: Planification of floating offshore wind

Abstract

This research investigates the process of construction of strategies aiming to accelerate emerging low-carbon innovations. We analyze national roadmaps developed for deepwaters offshore wind energy in six countries. The roadmaps analysis informs on how actors expect the system to grow, as well as on how critical processes such as guidance and legitimacy are formed. The results point to different types of guidances, in particular an increasing degree of external openness associated with government involvement in roadmapping and technology maturity. A survey of actors reveals that roadmaps tend to overinflate expectations and have a positive but limited impact on technology development. From local to global and back: A multidisciplinary reflection on perceptions of renewable energies and associated infrastructures in Portugal. This research investigates the process of construction of strategies aiming to accelerate emerging low-carbon innovations. We adopt the technological innovation systems perspective to focus on system building processes, including the establishment of constituent elements and performance of key innovative activities. We analyze national roadmaps that have been developed in six countries for a technology that is entering into the upscaling stage: offshore wind energy for deepwaters, where there is a high potential of production but whose technology is still immature. The roadmap analysis informs on how actors expect the system to grow, and enables an understanding about the formation of functions that are critical at this stage, such as direction of search or guidance and legitimacy. The analysis points to different types of guidance, in particular to an increasing degree of external openness associated with government involvement in roadmapping and approximation of technology deployment. A survey of actors from industry, research and government agencies reveals that roadmaps tend to overinflate expectations and that actors believe that roadmaps have a positive but limited impact on technology development. It also reveals that roadmaps visions align in several domains with the opinion expressed by companies, suggesting that their views may have prevailed in the process of collective vision building. Policy implications include recommendations for the management of the process of formation of expectations and visions on emerging innovations. The paper indicates limits to the application of the current functional analysis and informs about future research directions.