Technological regimes, path dependency and the environment

The relationship between technological change and the environment has been a critical issue for environmental policy for over two decades. Technology is seen as both the root-cause of many environmental problems, while also offering the means for reducing the ecological footprint of human activities. Recently this debate has become more urgent, partly as a result of renewed interest in policy communities, and partly as an outcome of conceptual and theoretical developments in the study of innovation and the environment. Policy communities are faced with major challenges including questions about how industrial economies can be radically decarbonised, and how step-jumps in resource efficiency may be achieved. New research on innovation and the environment emphasises the importance of looking at the level of technological systems and at the link between technologies and the institutional settings they are embedded within. In The Netherlands this has led to an important policy debate about the management of ‘system innovations’ in pursuit of high-level sustainability objectives (VROM, 2001). How did we get to this point in the debate? What do we know about these larger-scale technological transitions? What can we say about their management?