Editing IPCC:AR6/SR15/Chapter-4 (section)

==== 4.2.2.3 Disruptive innovation ====

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Demand-driven disruptive innovations that emerge as the product of political and social changes across multiple scales can be transformative (Seba, 2014; Christensen et al., 2015; Green and Newman, 2017a) <sup>[[#fn:r61|61]]</sup> . Such innovations would lead to simultaneous, profound changes in behaviour, economies and societies (Seba, 2014; Christensen et al. 2015), but are difficult to predict in supply-focused economic models (Geels et al., 2016a; Pindyck, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r62|62]]</sup> . Rapid socio-technical change has been observed in the solar industry (Creutzig et al. (2017) <sup>[[#fn:r63|63]]</sup> . Similar changes to socio-ecological systems can stimulate adaptation and mitigation options that lead to more climate-resilient systems (Adger et al., 2005; Ostrom, 2009; Gillard et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r64|64]]</sup> (see the Alaska and Nepal examples in Section 4.2.2.2). The increase in roof-top solar and energy storage technology as well as the increase in passive housing and net zero-emissions buildings are further examples of such disruptions (Green and Newman, 2017b) <sup>[[#fn:r65|65]]</sup> . Both roof-top solar and energy storage have benefitted from countries’ economic growth strategies and associated price declines in photovoltaic technologies, particularly in China (Shrivastava and Persson, 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r66|66]]</sup> , as well as from new information and communication technologies (Koomey et al., 2013) <sup>[[#fn:r67|67]]</sup> , rising demand for electricity in urban areas, and global concern regarding greenhouse gas emissions (Azeiteiro and Leal Filho, 2017; Lutz and Muttarak, 2017; Wamsler, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r68|68]]</sup> .

System co-benefits can create the potential for mutually enforcing and demand-driven climate responses (Jordan et al., 2015; Hallegatte and Mach, 2016; Pelling et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r69|69]]</sup> , and for rapid and transformational change (Cole, 2015; Geels et al., 2016b; Hallegatte and Mach, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r70|70]]</sup> . Examples of co-benefits include gender equality, agricultural productivity (Nyantakyi-Frimpong and Bezner-Kerr, 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r71|71]]</sup> , reduced indoor air pollution (Satterthwaite and Bartlett, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r72|72]]</sup> , flood buffering (Colenbrander et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r73|73]]</sup> , livelihood support (Shaw et al., 2014; Ürge-Vorsatz et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r74|74]]</sup> , economic growth (GCEC, 2014; Stiglitz et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r75|75]]</sup> , social progress (Steg et al., 2015; Hallegatte and Mach, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r76|76]]</sup> and social justice (Ziervogel et al., 2017; Patterson et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r77|77]]</sup> .

Innovations that disrupt entire systems may leave firms and utilities with stranded assets, as the transition can happen very quickly (IPCC, 2014b; Kossoy et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r78|78]]</sup> . This may have consequences for fossil fuels that are rendered ‘unburnable’ (McGlade and Ekins, 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r79|79]]</sup> and fossil fuel-fired power and industry assets that would become obsolete (Caldecott, 2017; Farfan and Breyer, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r80|80]]</sup> . The presence of multiple barriers and enablers operating in a system implies that rapid change, whether the product of many small changes (Termeer et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r81|81]]</sup> or large-scale disruptions, is seldom an insular or discrete process (Sterling et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r82|82]]</sup> . This finding informs the multidimensional nature of feasibility in Cross-Chapter Box 3 in Chapter 1 which is applied in Section 4.5. Climate responses that are aligned with multiple feasibility dimensions and combine adaptation and mitigation interventions with non-climate benefits can accelerate change and reduce risks and costs (Fazey et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r83|83]]</sup> . Also political, social and technological influences on energy transitions, for example, can accelerate them faster than narrow techno-economic analysis suggests is possible (Kern and Rogge, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r84|84]]</sup> , but could also introduce new constraints and risks (Geels et al., 2016b; Sovacool, 2016; Eyre et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r85|85]]</sup> .

Disruptive innovation and technological change may play a role in mitigation and in adaptation. The next section assesses mitigation and adaptation options in energy, land and ecosystem, urban and infrastructure and industrial systems.

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