26th JAN: IFI Seminar Series on Sustainability Transitions

  • Date：
    Wed, Jan 26, 2022
  • Time：
    16:45-17:45 JST (8:45-9:45 CET)
  • Location：
    Online (Zoom)
  • Language：

    English (simultaneous interpretation in Japanese will be provided)

  • Host：

    Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), The University of Tokyo

  • Co-host：

    H-UTokyo Lab. (Hitachi and U-Tokyo Joint Research) WG3

  • Registration：

    Advance registration required. Please register through the registration form below.
    *Zoom URL for participation has sent to applicants by e-mail on Tuesday, January 25.
    *If you do not receive an email from the secretariat, please contact us at ifi_tg★ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp. (Please replace ★ with @.)

Registration is now closed for this event.
Overview

Sustainability transitions research has received increasing attention in recent years, both in academia and policy making. The long-standing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption in energy, mobility, and other socio-technical systems have brought us enormous social challenges and problems, such as climate change. Such challenges are difficult to be dealt with through incremental innovation or innovation in respective technology. Instead, radical innovation involving fundamental transformation in the socio-technical systems—sustainability transitions, i.e. shifts to new socio-technical systems—and to understand how to govern and guide such a process is urgently needed.
Japan is confronting the challenges of moving toward carbon neutrality by 2050 and accelerating such a sustainable energy transition. In this online seminar series, we thus invite researchers from Europe which has led the sustainability transitions research, to share their insights in energy transition and to exchange ideas.

Speaker & Bio

Dr. Jochen Markard , Institute of Sustainable Development, Zurich University of Applied Sciences; Department of Management, Technology and Economics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

Presentation materials(PDF)

Bio:
Jochen Markard works as a senior researcher at Zurich University of Applied Sciences and as a lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
He has degrees in electrical engineering and energy economics, a PhD in innovation studies and a venia legendi (habilitation) in sustainability and management.
In his research, Jochen studies the interaction of new technologies, business strategies, politics and policies. A focus is on environmental innovations and sustainability transitions.
Jochen works at the intersection of different disciplines, including innovation studies, political sciences and management studies.

Title of talk & Abstract

“Sustainability transitions and net-zero: New challenges for research and policy”

The net-zero energy transition is an extraordinary societal challenge. It requires a swift, radical and economy wide transformation. In this talk, I will introduce sustainability transitions, a novel perspective to study major socio-technical changes at large scales. I will also discuss the challenges that lie ahead for the transition to net-zero. Currently, we see two developments that are new: low-carbon electrification across multiple sectors (e.g., transport, buildings) and new strategies (e.g., hydrogen or lifestyle changes) to tackle ‘difficult-to-decarbonize’ industries such as aviation, shipping or steel production. These recent developments create new challenges for research and policy making.

Contact

Secretariat, Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo
e-mail: ifi_tg★ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Please replace ★ with @.)