Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-13 (section)

=== 13.9.7 Steps for Acceleration ===

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The multidisciplinary literature exploring how to accelerate climate mitigation and transition to low GHG economies and systems has grown rapidly over the last few years. Acceleration is also confirmed as an important sub-theme of the more specific transition literature ( [[#Köhler--2019|Köhler et al. 2019]] ). While literature focusing on how to accelerate the impact of climate mitigation is derived from empirical evidence, there is very little ''ex post'' evidence of directed acceleration approaches.

The overlapping discussions of how to accelerate climate mitigation; transition to low-carbon economies; and shift development pathways depends heavily on country-specific dynamics in political coalitions, material endowments, industry strategy, cultural discourses, and civil society pressures (Sections 13.2, 13.3, 13.4, 13.7, and 13.8). Ambition for acceleration at different scales and stringency (whether for cities, country climate policies, country industrial strategies, or national economic restructuring) increase governance challenges, including coordination across stakeholders, institutions, and scales. ‘There is therefore no “one-size-fits-all” blueprint for accelerating low-carbon transitions’ ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Geels--2017a|Geels et al. 2017a]] ; [[#Roberts--2018|Roberts et al. 2018]] ).

[[#Markard--2020|Markard et al. (2020)]] describe the key challenges to accelerating climate mitigation and sustainability transitions as:

1. The ability for low-carbon innovations to emerge in whole systems. Two critical issues need to occur to overcome this challenge (i) complementary interactions between different elements. For example, in an electricity system, the integration of renewable energy requires complementary storage technologies etc. and (ii) changes in system architecture. Thus, in the accelerating phase, policy has to shift from stimulating singular innovations towards managing wider system transformation.

2. The need for greater interactions between adjacent systems: interactions between multiple systems increases the complexity of the transition. Policies are linked to institutions or government departments, and they are often compartmentalised into different policy areas (e.g. energy policy and transport policy). Increasing and coordinating that interaction adds complexity.

3. The resistance from declining industries; acceleration of sustainability transitions will involve the phase out of unsustainable technologies. As a result, acceleration towards a sustainability transition may be resisted – whether business models, or where jobs are involved. Political struggles and conflicts are an inherent part of accelerating transitions, one strategy to deal with this resistance is to accomplish wide societal support for long-term transition targets and to form broad constituencies of actors in favour of those transitions.

4. The need for changes in consumer practices and routines; this challenge relates to changes in social practices that may be required for mainstreaming of sustainable technologies. For example, electric vehicles require changes in trip planning and refuelling practices. Reducing levels or types of consumption is also desirable.

5. Coordination challenges in policy and governance. There is an increasing complexity of governance which can be overcome by stronger vertical and horizontal policy coordination across systems.

The acceleration literature links two over-arching actions: first, a strategic targeting approach to overcoming the challenges to acceleration by a parallel focus on undermining high carbon systems while simultaneously encouraging low-carbon systems; and second, focusing on a coordinated, cross-economy systemic response, including harnessing enabling conditions ( ''robust evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Rogelj--2015|Rogelj et al. 2015]] ; [[#Geels--2017b|Geels et al. 2017b]] ; [[#Hvelplund--2017|Hvelplund and Djørup 2017]] ; [[#Gomez%20Echeverri--2018|Gomez Echeverri 2018]] ; [[#Markard--2018|Markard 2018]] ; [[#Tvinnereim--2018|Tvinnereim and Mehling 2018]] ; [[#O’Brien--2018|O’Brien 2018]] ; [[#Roberts--2018|Roberts et al. 2018]] ; [[#Hess--2019|Hess 2019]] ; [[#Kotilainen--2019|Kotilainen et al. 2019]] ; [[#Victor--2019|Victor et al. 2019]] ; [[#European%20Environment%20Agency--2019|European Environment Agency 2019]] ; [[#Rosenbloom--2020|Rosenbloom and Rinscheid 2020]] ; [[#Newell--2020|Newell and Simms 2020]] ; [[#Otto--2020|Otto et al. 2020]] ; [[#Strauch--2020|Strauch 2020]] ; [[#Burger--2020a|Burger et al. 2020a]] ; [[#Hsu--2020b|Hsu et al. 2020b]] ; [[#Rosenbloom--2020|Rosenbloom et al. 2020]] ).

Strategic targeting, or the identifying of specific intervention points ( [[#Kanger--2020|Kanger et al. 2020]] ), points of leverage ( [[#Abson--2017|Abson et al. 2017]] ), or upward cascading tipping points ( [[#Sharpe--2021|Sharpe and Lenton 2021]] ), broadly means choosing particular actions which will lead to a greater acceleration of climate mitigation across systems. For example, Dorninger et al.(2020) provide a quantitative systematic review of empirical research addressing sustainability interventions. They take ‘leverage points’ – places in complex systems where relatively small changes can lead to potentially transformative systemic changes – to classify different interventions according to their potential for system-wide transformative change. They argue that ‘deep leverage points’ – the goals of a system, its intent, and rules – need to be addressed more directly, and they provide analysis of the food and energy systems.

The strategic choosing of policies and points of intervention is linked to the importance of choosing self-reinforcing actions for acceleration ( [[#Rosenbloom--2018|Rosenbloom et al. 2018]] ; [[#Butler-Sloss--2021|Butler-Sloss et al. 2021]] ; [[#Sharpe--2021|Sharpe and Lenton 2021]] ; [[#Jordan--2020|Jordan and Moore 2020]] ; [[#Bang--2021|Bang 2021]] ). [[#Butler-Sloss--2021|Butler-Sloss et al. (2021)]] explains the types of self-reinforcing actions (or feedback loops) which can encourage or undermine rapid transformation of energy systems.

An example of this first overarching action, the strategic targeting of the challenges to acceleration, is the focus on undermining carbon- intensive systems, thereby reducing opposition to more generalised acceleration policies, including the encouragement of low-carbon systems ( ''robust evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Hvelplund--2017|Hvelplund and Djørup 2017]] ; [[#Rosenbloom--2018|Rosenbloom 2018]] ; [[#Roberts--2019|Roberts and Geels 2019]] ; [[#Victor--2019|Victor et al. 2019]] ; [[#Rosenbloom--2020|Rosenbloom et al. 2020]] ; [[#Rosenbloom--2020|Rosenbloom and Rinscheid 2020]] ). Undermining high carbon systems includes deliberately phasing out unsustainable technologies and systems ( [[#Kivimaa--2016|Kivimaa and Kern 2016]] ; [[#David--2017|David 2017]] ; [[#European%20Environment%20Agency--2019|European Environment Agency 2019]] ; [[#Johnsson--2019|Johnsson et al. 2019]] ; [[#UNEP--2019b|UNEP 2019b]] ; [[#Carter--2020|Carter and McKenzie 2020]] ; [[#Newell--2020|Newell and Simms 2020]] ); confronting the issues of incumbent resistance ( [[#Roberts--2018|Roberts et al. 2018]] ); and avoiding future emissions and energy excess by reducing demand ( [[#Rogelj--2015|Rogelj et al. 2015]] ; [[#UNEP--2019b|UNEP 2019b]] ; [[#Victor--2019|Victor et al. 2019]] ).

Other strategic goals include tackling the equity and justice issues of ‘stranded regions’ ( [[#Spencer--2018|Spencer et al. 2018]] ); paying greater attention to system architecture to enable increased acceleration to low-carbon electricity supply, in this case in the wind industry ( [[#McMeekin--2019|McMeekin et al. 2019]] ); and the importance of maintaining global ecosystem of low-carbon supply chains ( [[#Goldthau--2020|Goldthau and Hughes 2020]] ).

Other strategic goals combine national and global action. For example, global NGO coalitions have formed around strategic policy outcomes such as the ‘Keep it in the Ground’ movement ( [[#Carter--2020|Carter and McKenzie 2020]] ), and are supported via coordinated networks, such as the Powering Past Coal Alliance ( [[#Jewell--2019|Jewell et al. 2019]] ), and with knowledge dissemination, for example, the ‘Fossil Fuel Cuts Database’ ( [[#Gaulin--2020|Gaulin and Le Billon 2020]] ).

The second overarching point highlighted by the literature is the benefits of focusing on a coordinated, cross-economy systemic response. Coordination is central to this. For example, coordination of actions and coherent narratives across sectors and cross economy, including within and between all governance levels and scales of actions, is beneficial for acceleration ( ''robust evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) ( [[#Zürn--2013|Zürn and Faude 2013]] ; [[#Hawkey--2014|Hawkey and Webb 2014]] ; [[#Huttunen--2014|Huttunen et al. 2014]] ; [[#Magro--2014|Magro et al. 2014]] ; [[#Warren--2016|Warren et al. 2016]] ; [[#Köhler--2019|Köhler et al. 2019]] ; [[#Kotilainen--2019|Kotilainen et al. 2019]] ; [[#McMeekin--2019|McMeekin et al. 2019]] ; [[#Victor--2019|Victor et al. 2019]] ; [[#Hsu--2020b|Hsu et al. 2020b]] ). [[#Victor--2019|Victor et al. (2019)]] provide a framework of how to prioritise the most urgent actions for climate mitigation and they give practical case studies of how to improve coordination to accelerate reconfiguration of systems for economy-wide climate mitigation in sectors such as power; cars; shipping; aviation; buildings; cement; and plastics.

However, coordination is a necessary but insufficient condition of acceleration. All enabling conditions are required to deliver systemic transformation ( [[#13.9.2|Section 13.9.2]] ).

Other disciplines argue that social transformation is likely to be as important as the technical challenges in a coordinated, cross-economy approach to acceleration. For example, some argue for social tipping interventions (STI) alongside other technical and political interventions so that they can ‘activate contagious processes of rapidly spreading technologies, behaviours, social norms, and structural reorganisation’ ( [[#Otto--2020|Otto et al. 2020]] ). They argue that these STIs are ''inter alia'' : removing fossil fuel subsidies and incentivising decentralised energy generation; building carbon neutral cities; divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels; revealing the moral implications of fossil fuels; strengthening climate education and engagement; and disclosing information of GHG emissions ( [[#Otto--2020|Otto et al. 2020]] ). Others illuminate the importance of narratives and framings in the take-up (or not) of acceleration actions ( [[#Sovacool--2020|Sovacool et al. 2020]] ). Others are optimistic about the possibilities of transformation but also highlight the importance of political economy for rapid and just transitions ( [[#Newell--2020|Newell and Simms 2020]] ; Newell 2021).

In summary, a synthesis of the multidisciplinary, acceleration literature suggests that climate mitigation is a multifaceted problem which spans cross-economy and society issues, and that solutions to acceleration may lie in coordinated systemic approaches to change and strategic targeting of leverage points. Broadly, this literature agrees on a dual approach of non-incremental systemic change and a targeting of specific acceleration challenges, with tailored actions drawing on enabling conditions. The underlying argument of this is that there is a strategic logic to focusing on actions which undermine high carbon systems at the same time as encouraging low-carbon systems. If high carbon systems are weakened then this may reduce the opposition to policies and actions aimed at accelerating climate mitigation, enabling more support for low-carbon systems. In addition, targeting of actions which may create ‘tipping point cascades’ which increase the rate of decarbonisation may also be beneficial. Finally, new modes of governance may be better suited to this approach in the context of transformative change.

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