The politics of overcoming carbon lock-in: Managing decline and transition in the automotive industry

Our economies are characterized by ‘carbon lock-in’ – carbon-intensive configurations of technologies, institutions, business models and other elements that reinforce the continued use of fossil energy. Political and business efforts to overcome carbon lock-in have long focused on green innovation. Despite successes, systems at all scales (e.g., countries & firms) are still locked-in: green innovations complement (not: replace) car-bon-intensive systems, so that global fossil fuel consumption continues to rise. Advancing a new research frontier to overcome this particularly rigid type of path dependence, this project focuses on deliberate decline of established carbon-intensive systems.
A focus on deliberate decline responds to recent climate assessments stressing the urgency of bold business and government action against climate change.