Politics of Sustainability Transitions

This group of studies examines the conditions that enable or impede significant changes of our industrial systems (food, energy, transportation, buildings, health, etc.) in ways that reduce their negative environmental effects. The term "sustainability transitions" is frequently used to describe this general research area, with the understanding that at a global level, the achievement of a sustainable or steady-state economy has to date been a failure.

The field of research on sustainability transitions and energy transitions is very large, and it includes a wide range of perspectives and theoretical frameworks. Within this large field, I have focused on research on what is now known as the politics of transitions (drawing mostly on social movement theory) and on sociotechnical perspectives on energy transitions (drawing mostly on STS). This work is continuous with my other page on local sustainability and democracy (and some of the articles overlap), but it has a wider scope and includes more technically focused papers.

For research on the politics of transitions, I have worked on political coalitions, framing and values, and countervailing power.  I show how coalition structure coincides with framing and therefore how advocates must constantly adapt their message as their own coalitions change and as those of opponents change. I have also written various papers that integrate social movement studies with the politics of sustainability transitions. A selection of this work is listed below.

2023. David J. Hess. Conflict and uneven development in the multidecade solar energy transition in the U.S.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (47) e2206200119. Available here: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206200119. ​

2023. David J. Hess and Meagan Jordan. Demunicipalization as Political Process: Strategic Action and the Sale of Municipal Electricity Utilities in the United States. Utilities Policy 82: 101523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2023.101523. Available open access at the journal web site here.

2023. McKane, Rachel G., and David Hess. "The impact of ridesourcing on equity and sustainability in North American cities: A systematic review of the literature." Cities 133 (2023): 104122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.104122. Available open access at the journal web site here.

2022. Ryan T. Trahan and David J. Hess. Will Power be Local? The Role of Local Power Organizations in Energy Transition Acceleration. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 183, 121884 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121884. Available open access at the journal web site here.

2022. Joshua Basseches, Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, Max Boykoff, Trevor Culhane, Galen Hall, Noel Healy, David J. Hess, David Hsu, Rachel Krause, Harland Prechel, J. Timmons Roberts, Andrew Scerri, and Jennie Stephens. Climate Policy Conflict in the U.S. States: A Critical Review and Way Forward. Climatic Change. Available open access at the journal web site.

2022. Benjamin K. Sovacool, David J. Hess, Roberto Cantoni, Dasom Lee, Marie Claire Brisbois, Hans Jakob Walnum, Ragnhild Freng Dale, Bente Johnsen Rygg, Marius Korsnes, and Anandajit Goswami.  Conflicted Transitions: Actors, Tactics, and Outcomes of Energy Infrastructure Opposition and Community Mobilization in Carbon-intensive Regions. Global Environmental Change 73 (March, 2022), 102473, pp. 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102473. Available open access at the journal web site.

2022. Rachel G. McKane and David J. Hess. Ridesourcing and Urban Inequality in Chicago: Connecting Mobility Disparities to Unequal Development, Gentrification, and Displacement. Environment and Planning A 54(3): 572-592. Available open access at the journal web site.

2022. David J. Hess. Environmental Movements and Industrial Transitions. In Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso, eds., Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements. New York: Routledge. Pp. 482-502. Pre-publication version available here.

2022. Hess, David J. Undone Science and Smart Cities: Civil Society Perspectives on Risk and Emerging Technologies. Johannes Glückler, Heinz-Dieter Meyer, Laura Suarsana (eds) Knowledge and Civil Society (Knowledge and Space, Vol 17). Cham: Springer International. Pp. 57-73. Available open access at https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030711467.

2021. Ryan Thomas Trahan and David J. Hess. Who Controls Electricity Transitions? Digitization, Decarbonization, and Local Power Organizations. Energy Research & Social Science 80: 102219. Available open access at the journal web site here. 

2021. David J. Hess, Rachel McKane, and Caroline Pietrzyk. End of the Line: Environmental Justice, Energy Justice, and Opposition to Power Lines. Environmental Politics. 10.1080/09644016.2021.1952799. Available open access here.

2021. David J. Hess, Rachel G. McKane, and Kaelee Belletto. Advocating a Just Transition in Appalachia: Civil Society and Industrial Change in a Carbon-Intensive Region. Energy Research & Social Science 75 (May): 102004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102004. Available open access here.

2021. Hess, David J., and Rachel G. McKane. Making Sustainability Plans More Equitable: An Analysis of 50 U.S. Cities. Local Environment 26(4): 461-476. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2021.1892047. Available open access here.

2021. Sovacool, Benjamin, David J. Hess, Robert Cantoni. 2021. Energy Transitions from the Cradle to the Grave: A Meta-theoretical Framework Integrating Responsible Innovation, Social Practices, and Energy Justice. Energy Research and Social Science 75 (May, 2021), 102027, pp. 1-16. Available here.

2021. Kungl, Gregor, and David J. Hess. Sustainability Transitions and Strategic Action Fields: A Literature Review and Discussion. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 38: 22-33. Final author's manuscript here. Note that the published version deleted some lines from the discussion section. The error occurred after we approved the final proofs. The corrected proofs for the discussion section are here.

2020. Lee, Dasom, David J. Hess, and Himanshu Neema. 2020. The Challenges of Implementing Transactive Energy: A Comparative Analysis of Experimental Projects. The Electricity Journal (will be open access).

2020.  Benjamin Sovacool, David Hess, et al. Sociotechnical Agendas: Reviewing Future Directions for Energy and Climate Research.  Energy Research and Social Science. doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101617  Available open access.

2020. David Hess and Benjamin Sovacool. Sociotechnical Matters: Science and Technology Studies Perspectives in Energy Studies. Energy Research and Social Science 65. Available open access. Data set of articles reviewed here.

2020. David Hess and Dasom Lee. Energy Decentralization in California and New York: Value Conflicts in the Politics of Shared Solar and Community Choice. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 121: forthcoming.  This is available open access.

2020. David Hess. Incumbent-led transitions and civil society: future autonomous vehicle policy and consumer organizations in the United States. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 151: forthcoming. Available open access.

2020. Dasom Lee and David Hess. Regulations for On-Road Testing of Connected and Automated Vehicles: Assessing the Potential for Global Safety Harmonization. Transportation Research A: Policy and Planning 136: 85-98. doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2020.03.026. Available open access here.

2019. Dasom Lee and David Hess. Incumbent resistance and the solar transition: changing opportunity structures and framing strategies. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 33: 183-195. //doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2019.05.005. Final manuscript draft here.

2019. David Hess. Cooler Coalitions for a Warmer Planet: A Review of Political Strategies for Accelerating Energy Transitions. Energy Research & Social Science 57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101246. Available open access.

2019. David Hess. Energy Politics in the Public Sphere: Frames, Values, and Symbolic Power. In Gunter Bombaerts, Kirsten Jenkins, Yekeen Sanusi, and Wang Guoyu, eds. Pp. 23-44. Energy Justice across Borders. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Article available open access from the publisher.

2019.  David J. Hess and Madison Renner. Conservative Political Parties and Energy Transitions in Europe: Opposition to Climate Mitigation Policies. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews  104: 419-428. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2019.01.019. Accepted manuscript here.

2019. Jonathan Köhler et al. A Review and Agenda for Sustainability Transitions Research: State of the Art and Future Directions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 31: 1-32. [I worked on the civil society section.] Prepublication version available here.

2019. David J. Hess. Coalitions, framing, and the politics of energy transitions: local democracy and community choice in California. Energy Research and Social Science 50: 38-50.  Available open access here.

2018. David J. Hess. The Anti-Dam Movement in Brazil: Expertise and Design Conflicts in an Industrial Transition Movement. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology, and Society 1(1): 256-279. 10.1080/25729861.2018.1548160. Available open access here.

2018. David J. Hess. Social Movements and Energy Democracy: Types of Processes of Mobilization. Frontiers in Energy, special issue on “Energizing Global Democracy,” 6: #135. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2018.00135.  Available open access here.

2018. David Hess and Magdalena Sudibjo. Supporting Regional Cleantech Sectors in North America. Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy 14(1): 22-30. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2018.1536308.  Available open access here.

2018. David J. Hess and Kate Pride Brown. Water and the Politics of Sustainability Transitions: From Regime Actor Conflicts to System Governance Organizations. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 20(2): 128-142. 10.1080/1523908X.2017.1341304.   Prepublication version here.

2018. David J. Hess. Social Movements and Energy Democracy: Types of Processes of Mobilization. Frontiers in Energy, special issue on “Energizing Global Democracy,” 6: #135. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2018.00135.  Available open access here.

2018. David J. Hess. Energy Democracy and Social Movements: A Multicoalition Perspective on the Politics of Energy Transitions. Energy Research and Social Science 40: 177-189.    Available open access here.

2018. David J. Hess, Quan D. Mai, Rachel Skaggs, and Magdalena Sudibjo. "Local Matters: Political Opportunities, Spatial Scale, and Support for Green Jobs Policies." Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 26:158-170. Abstract here.  Final prepublication version here.

2017. David J. Hess and Rachel G. McKane. “Renewable Energy Research and Development: A Political Economy Perspective.” In David Tyfield, Rebecca Lave, Samuel Randalls, and Charles Thorpe, eds. Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science. Pp. 275-288. Final, prepublication version is here.

2017. David J. Hess and Kate Pride Brown. Water and the Politics of Sustainability Transitions: From Regime Actor Conflicts to System Governance Organizations. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. 10.1080/1523908X.2017.1341304. Prepublication version here version available here.

2017. David J. Hess, Christopher A. Wold, Scott C. Worland, and George M. Hornberger. Measuring Urban Water Conservation Policies: Toward a Comprehensive Index. Journal of the American Water Resources Association. 53(2): 442-455. 10.1111/1752-1688.12506. Abstract here. Prepublication version here.

2017. David J. Hess and Kate Pride Brown. Green Tea: Clean-Energy Conservatism as a Countermovement. Environmental Sociology 3(1): 64-75. DOI 10.1080/23251042.2016.1227417. Available open access here.

2017. Kate Pride Brown and David J. Hess. The Politics of Water Conservation: Identifying and Overcoming Political Barriers to Successful Policies. Water Policy 9(2): 304-321. 10.2166/wp.2016.089. Abstract here.  Prepublication version here.

2016. Kate Pride Brown and David J. Hess. Pathways to Policy: Partisanship and Bipartisanship in Renewable Energy Policy. Environmental Politics. 26: 971-990. 10.1080/09644016.2016.1203523. This article is available open-access at the publisher web site here.

2016. Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions. MIT Press.

2016 David J. Hess, Christopher A. Wold, Elise Hunter, John Nay, Scott Worland, Jonathan Gilligan, and George M. Hornberger. Drought, Risk, and Institutional Politics in the American Southwest. Sociological Forum  31(S1): 807-827. 10.1111/socf.12274. Final, open-access version at publisher web site here.

2016 Hess, David J.  The Politics of Niche-Regime Conflicts: Distributed Solar Energy in the United States. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 19: 42-45. Final, open-access version at publisher web site here.

2016 Hess, David J., Quan D. Mai, and Kate Pride Brown.  Red States, Green Laws: Ideology and Renewable Energy Legislation in the United States. Energy Research and Social Science 11:19-28.  Final, open-access version is available at the publisher web site is here. Correction: In Table 1, SB 409 should read SB 418 Solar Tax Exemption for Equipment. The vote is correct. The tax credit for thermal was HB 1917 in the previous year. A data set from this project is available. The data set is here.

2015 Hornberger, George M., David J. Hess, and Jonathan Gilligan. Water Conservation and Hydrological Transitions in American Cities. Water Resources Research 51(6): 4635-3649.

2015 Hess, David J., and Quan Mai. The Convergence of Economic Development and Energy Transition Policies in State-government Plans in the United States. Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy 11(1): 5-20. http://sspp.proquest.com/static_content/vol11iss1/1404-006.hess.pdf.

2015 Hess, David J., Jonathan S. Coley, Quan D. Mai, and Lucas Hilliard. Party Differences and Energy Reform: Fiscal Conservatism in the California Legislature. Environmental Politics 24(2): 228-248. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644016.2014.973222

2014 Hess, David J., and Quan D. Mai. Renewable Electricity Policy in Asia: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Factors Affecting Sustainability Transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 12:31-46. Shows the influence of fossil fuel endowments on green-energy policy in Asian countries. Final draft version here.

2014 Sustainability Transitions: A Political Coalition Framework. Research Policy 43(2): 278-283. This continues the thread of work on countervailing industrial power that I was developing in my paper in Global Environmental Change (below). Final draft here.

2014 "Political Ideology and the Green-Energy Transition in the United State." In Daniel Kleinman and Kelly Moore, eds. Routledge Handbook of Science, Technology, and Society. New York: Routledge. Paper here.

2013. On the Conditions Affecting Successful Sustainable Consumption Programs and Policies. Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Network, Annual Meeting, Clark University, June 13. These are discussant comments that develop my line of thinking on the conditions that are favorable and unfavorable for green-transition policies. Paper here.

2013. Invited panelist, SEC Symposium on Government, University, and Industry Partnerships in Renewable Energy Policy and Practice, Atlanta. Link to video.

2013. Transitions in Energy Systems: The Mitigation-Adaptation Relationship. Science as Culture, special issue. 22(2): 197-203. Paper here.

2013 Sustainable Consumption, Energy, and Failed Transitions: The Problem of Adaptation. In Maurie Cohen, Halina Brown, and Philip Vergragt (ed.), Innovations in Sustainable Consumption: New Economics, Socio-Technical Transitions, and Social Practices. Edward Elgar. Paper here.

2013 Industrial Fields and Countervailing Power: The Transformation of Distributed Solar Energy in the United States. Global Environmental Change 23(5): 847-855. This paper engages transition theory by developing the thesis of countervailing power in sustainability transitions.  it also examines the marginalization of localism in the solar industry. Prepublication version here.

2012 Good Green Jobs in a Global Economy: Making and Keeping New Industries in the United States (MIT Press, 2012; Google Books Preview), examines the politics of green energy policy reform in the United States. The social movement focus here is on "green transition coalitions," or the coalitions of labor, environmental, urban poverty, and clean-energy businesses. This book builds on the NSF-funded 2010 research project (see below) by taking a more theoretical look at the significance of green industrial policy in the U.S. There is both a methodological and theoretical argument. Methodologically, I argue first that there is a need for a sociological approach to sustainability transitions (see the next section) that focuses on political ideology, coalitions, and scalar dynamics. The book tracks the fortunes of green industrial policy at the state and local government level and also at the federal government level during the Obama administration. Theoretically, the overarching thesis is historical: the politics of the green transition in the United States are now deeply interwoven with the relative decline of the United States in the global economy and the rise of newly industrializing countries. As a result, developmentalist ideology, which had been prominent in the country throughout the nineteenth century, is re-emerging. Developmentalism involves a reinvigorated industrial policy and a more defensive position with respect to trade. This argument ties in with my general work on political ideology.

2012 The New Developmentalism: How the Long-Term Shifts to an Asia-Centered, Low-Carbon Global Economy are Connected. World Financial Review, Nov.-Dec. Here.

For earlier work see the main page of "All Research."

Sponsorship

Research on the studies of state-government votes in legislatures was funded as part of the National Science Foundation training and research grant "Conditions Favoring Consensus in State-Level Energy Policy,” STS Program (SES-1329310), which brought together political sociology with the study of sustainability transitions. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The grant trained 19 students in a summer seminar in 2014 and it provided student research support for research on the types of energy laws upon which state government legislators in the U.S. were more and less likely to agree. This led to novel approaches to the connections between political ideology and bill characteristics. 

The book Good Green Jobs was partially supported by the National Science Foundation’s Program on Science and Technology Studies for the grant “The Greening of Economic Development” (SES-0947429). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or of the sponsoring university.

Research on water conservation policy was partially funded by “Water Conservation and Hydrological Transitions in American Cities,” Hydrologic Sciences, NSF, EAR-1416964. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or of the sponsoring university.

Research with Dasom Lee on transactive energy and automated vehicles was funded partially by the National Science Foundation, OISE-1743722, Partnerships for International Science and Engineering (PIRE) Program: "Science of Design for Societal-Scale Cyber-Physical Systems." Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or of the sponsoring university.