Harald Rohracher
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 101543 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Harald Rohracher |
| NOMBRES | Harald |
| APELLIDO | Rohracher |
| FIRMA | ROHRACHER H |
| AFILIACIONES | Linköping University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3945-0183 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 41 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 985 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2002 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Expectations, Visions and Imaginaries
This chapter discusses the role of visions, expectations, and socio-technical imaginaries in shaping sustainability transitions. Imagining futures different from current socio-technical regimes is essential for legitimizing and mobilizing niche technologies and driving system change. More recently, mission-oriented and transformative innovation policies have emphasised envisioning and collective expectations in defining and implementing long-term…
Transformative portfolios in the Dutch municipal heat transition
Research on transition intermediation has not yet explored what strategies intermediaries can adopt, or what challenges they face, when pursuing transformative goals in projectified environments in more mature phases of transitions. This study conceptualizes transformative portfolios (coherent and coordinated sets of projects and interventions) as relational infrastructures: principles and mechanisms through which interventions are strategically …
Emergent lock-ins in sustainability transitions
Governing the Infrastructural, Spatial, and Social Consequences of Urban Digital Food Delivery Platforms
Digital food delivery platforms (DFDPs) are transforming how food is distributed and consumed in cities, but also how urban space, infrastructure, and labor are organized. This article examines how DFDPs affect urban infrastructure in cities by analyzing their spatial, logistical, and governance impacts. Drawing on interviews with municipal officials, platform companies, and civil society actors in three Swedish cities, as well as document analys…
Styringskapasitet for urbane lavkarbonfremtider
Å bekjempe klimakrisen vil kreve grunnleggende endringer i måten vi arbeider, forbruker, produserer og forflytter oss på, der byer vil spille en ledende rolle. Kritisk, engasjert og handlingsorientert samfunnsvitenskap er påkrevd i omstillingen
Experimenting to remain the same
Experiments such as pilot projects and testbeds are a core element in governing sustainability transitions and have become increasingly popular as an instrument of environmental governance more broadly. However, despite its merits in creating diversity and novel configurations which eventually may replace dominant regimes, experimentation does not take place in a 'politics-free space' but is always prone to capture by powerful actors and interest…
Empowering environmental entrepreneurs in the Global South? The case of a Sustainable Building Incubator in Phnom Penh
Heterogeneous energy infrastructures in Europe
Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) have rapidly emerged as a dominant policy instrument in Europe to accelerate urban climate transitions. PEDs target the district scale to optimise energy system performance through a combination of technical and social interventions. These activities are driven by an engineering logic that considers energy infrastructures to be rational, integrated, and governable. In practice, PED stakeholders engage with heterog…
More than wires and screens
Developing a low-carbon energy system requires far-reaching societal transformations, not least in energy-related practices and behaviour. Smart energy grids have recently gained attention among national governments as a potential solution for low-carbon energy transitions at the household level as they are assumed to empower energy consumers and make them an active part of a more balanced and sustainable energy system. The aim of this paper is t…
Citizen-led decentralised energy futures
The current energy systems are undergoing fundamental changes driven by the climate crisis, unfolding digitalisation and increasing calls for a more active citizens' engagement. The impact of these ongoing trends on the future energy system, however, is far from straightforward. Although there is an increasing shift towards a decentralisation, it is not clear yet how exactly this new decentralised configuration will unfold and materialise. In thi…
Re-assembling infrastructures from below. The agency of households in the sustainable energy transition
High shares of renewable energy generation, digitalisation, and increased electrification are putting energy systems in flux. In this article we examine the ways households actively re-configure energy system relations at the local level and become agents in the ongoing energy transition. Drawing on assemblage theory, we foreground processes of emergence, the multiplicity of current configurations and the assemblage work required to create new in…
Urban transition interventions in the Global South
Changing power relations and the empowerment of frontrunners are considered crucial preconditions for sustainability transitions. This paper looks into the empowerment of actors in the context of a transition intervention in the Global South. We argue that empowerment is of particular importance in contexts of the Global South or those with illiberal characteristics. A holistic understanding of empowerment is needed to improve transition governan…
Planning Education and Transformative Capacity for Climate-Neutral Cities
To achieve their goal to become climate neutral, Swedish municipalities must significantly improve their transformative capacities. Adapting the roles and practices of urban planners is an important element in this process. This paper critically reflects on the way in which improved planning education may help to enable a new generation of planners to face the challenges of rapid urban transformation and provides them with the knowledge and tools…
Marginalising household users in smart grids
Unless just and inclusive, transitions to low carbon-energy systems are unlikely to receive sufficient legitimacy and broad public support. While research on inequalities and injustices in energy transitions is growing, these issues remain less explored in the case of the digitalisation of the energy systems through smart grids and smart homes. This paper aims to synthetise our understandings of inequality, exclusion and vulnerability in energy t…
Att energigemenskapa
I denna artikel undersöks energigemenskaper som en arena inom vilken möjligheterna till en mer rättvis och demokratiskt orienterad klimatomställning tar form. Mer specifikt utforskas hur energigemenskaper i Sverige utkristalliseras mot bakgrund av EU:s Ren Energi-paket, där dessa utpekats som ett viktigt verktyg för ett utökat medborgardeltagande och en fördjupad demokratisering. Med avstamp i kritisk samhällsvetenskaplig miljöforskning undersöks…
Houses of cards and concrete
Scholars widely agree that cities and their built environments play a decisive role for a global transformation towards sustainability. This necessitates a shift away from unsustainable practices and constellations in cities towards more sustainable ones – particularly in contexts of the Global South, as they see the strongest current and projected urban growth and related construction activities. Research on urban sustainability transitions has …
Technopolitics of future-making
Implementing the EU Clean Energy Package (CEP) and its provisions for strengthening energy communities – the cooperative production and management of energy at local level by citizens, a concept emphasising citizen participation and empowerment – has opened a new arena for contestations over energy futures in Sweden. An aim of CEP is to contribute to just energy transitions through citizen participation and democratisation by using the potential …
An agenda for future Social Sciences and Humanities research on energy efficiency
Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)—including critical reflections on what changing a society’s relation to energy (efficiency) even means—have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policymakers, funders, and other decision-makers when driving research agendas, and (ii) the setting of SSH-…
A politics of calculation
New building codes and stricter regulation of energy consumption and CO2 emissions have become key strategies to support the low-carbon transition of the housing sector. Such regulations rest heavily on setting performance targets for buildings and developing standardized calculation procedures for determining the compliance of new buildings with the building code. While developing such targets, standards and calculation tools are largely present…
Knowledge management in transition management
Despite the extensive literature on learning in urban transitions, we still have a limited understanding on how higher-order learning takes place in transition management and is spread within the transition arena. In this paper we analyze the efforts of transferring such embedded knowledge and its interrelation with learning through the examples of three Swedish municipalities engaged in urban transition management. To do so, we developed a frame…
Assessing transformative change of infrastructures in urban area redevelopments
Urban redevelopments create opportunities for experimenting with innovative infrastructural solutions towards transformative urban change. Novel solutions such as decentralised infrastructure systems can become essential strategies for helping cities meet multiple sustainability outcomes. However, achieving infrastructural change is a tremendous challenge given the obduracy of these large and complex systems. Assessing and monitoring ongoing infr…
A perspective on the future of sustainability transitions research
The journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (EIST) recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. Its development represents a great success, contributing substantially to the consolidation and maturation of the research field of sustainability transitions. However, being content with past successes will not be sufficient for tackling emerging challenges. In this perspective paper, we take stock of recent dynamics in the field by an…
Competing Transport Futures
The choice of fuels has frequently been at the center of debates about how a future low-carbon mobility system can be achieved. This paper introduces two visions of biogas fuels and electricity using material from interviews and documents in Swedish transport. These visions are analyzed as interrelated sociotechnical imaginaries. To better understand the way visions of biogas and electric vehicles (EVs) dynamically shape and condition each other,…
Celebrating a decade of Eist
Passive houses as affiliative objects
An agenda for sustainability transitions research
Of solar collectors, wind power, and car sharing
Informal institutions matter
A perspective on the future of sustainability transitions research
The journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (EIST) recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. Its development represents a great success, contributing substantially to the consolidation and maturation of the research field of sustainability transitions. However, being content with past successes will not be sufficient for tackling emerging challenges. In this perspective paper, we take stock of recent dynamics in the field by an…
The Interplay of Urban Energy Policy and Socio-technical Transitions
The cities of Graz in Austria and Freiburg in Germany have been perceived as ecological model cities since the late 1980s.This is shown by various international awards, press coverage and many visitors from other municipal administrations. Both cities have been well known for their attempts to bring about transitions towards more sustainable and low-carbon energy systems. The comparison of Graz and Freiburg over a period of two decades enables us…
Pathways to electricity for all
Village-level solar power in Africa
From sustainable to smart
Households as infrastructure junctions in urban sustainability transitions
The integration of infrastructure domains and resource flows such as electricity, heat, water and waste increasingly gains currency in strategies to achieve more resource-efficient, smart and resilient cities. While widely discussed concepts of a nexus of resource systems, such as energy–water–food, aim at a more optimised and integrative management of resource flows, this article investigates how infrastructure integration is accomplished throug…
The Role of Users in the Social Shaping of Environmental Technologies
A better understanding of the role of end-users in processes of technology innovation and diffusion could help to develop a broader range of policy instruments fostering the development of environmentally friendly and politically desirable technologies and products. Such insights could help to improve conditions for a more conscious, reflexive and inclusive learning process between designers, intermediaries and users in product-creation processes…
Technopolitics of future-making
Implementing the EU Clean Energy Package (CEP) and its provisions for strengthening energy communities – the cooperative production and management of energy at local level by citizens, a concept emphasising citizen participation and empowerment – has opened a new arena for contestations over energy futures in Sweden. An aim of CEP is to contribute to just energy transitions through citizen participation and democratisation by using the potential …
Competing Transport Futures
The choice of fuels has frequently been at the center of debates about how a future low-carbon mobility system can be achieved. This paper introduces two visions of biogas fuels and electricity using material from interviews and documents in Swedish transport. These visions are analyzed as interrelated sociotechnical imaginaries. To better understand the way visions of biogas and electric vehicles (EVs) dynamically shape and condition each other,…
Citizen-led decentralised energy futures
The current energy systems are undergoing fundamental changes driven by the climate crisis, unfolding digitalisation and increasing calls for a more active citizens' engagement. The impact of these ongoing trends on the future energy system, however, is far from straightforward. Although there is an increasing shift towards a decentralisation, it is not clear yet how exactly this new decentralised configuration will unfold and materialise. In thi…
Houses of cards and concrete
Scholars widely agree that cities and their built environments play a decisive role for a global transformation towards sustainability. This necessitates a shift away from unsustainable practices and constellations in cities towards more sustainable ones – particularly in contexts of the Global South, as they see the strongest current and projected urban growth and related construction activities. Research on urban sustainability transitions has …
Marginalising household users in smart grids
Unless just and inclusive, transitions to low carbon-energy systems are unlikely to receive sufficient legitimacy and broad public support. While research on inequalities and injustices in energy transitions is growing, these issues remain less explored in the case of the digitalisation of the energy systems through smart grids and smart homes. This paper aims to synthetise our understandings of inequality, exclusion and vulnerability in energy t…
Celebrating a decade of Eist
Re-assembling infrastructures from below. The agency of households in the sustainable energy transition
High shares of renewable energy generation, digitalisation, and increased electrification are putting energy systems in flux. In this article we examine the ways households actively re-configure energy system relations at the local level and become agents in the ongoing energy transition. Drawing on assemblage theory, we foreground processes of emergence, the multiplicity of current configurations and the assemblage work required to create new in…
Urban transition interventions in the Global South
Changing power relations and the empowerment of frontrunners are considered crucial preconditions for sustainability transitions. This paper looks into the empowerment of actors in the context of a transition intervention in the Global South. We argue that empowerment is of particular importance in contexts of the Global South or those with illiberal characteristics. A holistic understanding of empowerment is needed to improve transition governan…
Assessing transformative change of infrastructures in urban area redevelopments
Urban redevelopments create opportunities for experimenting with innovative infrastructural solutions towards transformative urban change. Novel solutions such as decentralised infrastructure systems can become essential strategies for helping cities meet multiple sustainability outcomes. However, achieving infrastructural change is a tremendous challenge given the obduracy of these large and complex systems. Assessing and monitoring ongoing infr…
Passive houses as affiliative objects
A Sociotechnical Mapping of Domestic Biomass Heating Systems in Austria
Introducing the perspective of science and technology studies (STS) to the analysis of the design and adoption of environmentally friendly technologies may help develop more effective and diversified strategies for an environmentally oriented technology policy. A case study of the organizational context and sociotechnical network of modern domestic bio-mass heating systems in Austria demonstrates the usefulness of such an approach. Mapping out th…
The Role of Users in the Social Shaping of Environmental Technologies
A better understanding of the role of end-users in processes of technology innovation and diffusion could help to develop a broader range of policy instruments fostering the development of environmentally friendly and politically desirable technologies and products. Such insights could help to improve conditions for a more conscious, reflexive and inclusive learning process between designers, intermediaries and users in product-creation processes…
‘Energy regions’
Crisis, Chance, or Business as Usual? Three Scenarios for the Austrian Energy Supply Krise, Chance oder Business as usual? Drei Szenarien für Österreichs Energieversorgung
Genomforschung – Politik – Gesellschaft
Local Demonstrations for Global Transitions—Dynamics across Governance Levels Fostering Socio-Technical Regime Change Towards Sustainability
Which role do spatial dimensions play in the transformation of socio-technical regimes, in particular the energy system, towards more sustainable configurations? Concepts such as the multi-level perspective on socio-technical change have not given sufficient attention to space and place so far. We develop our considerations around the case of an “Energy Region” in Austria where people try to bring about a substantive shift in their “local” energy…
Legitimizing research, technology and innovation policies for transformative change
Of solar collectors, wind power, and car sharing
Informal institutions matter
The Interplay of Urban Energy Policy and Socio-technical Transitions
The cities of Graz in Austria and Freiburg in Germany have been perceived as ecological model cities since the late 1980s.This is shown by various international awards, press coverage and many visitors from other municipal administrations. Both cities have been well known for their attempts to bring about transitions towards more sustainable and low-carbon energy systems. The comparison of Graz and Freiburg over a period of two decades enables us…
Science and Technology Studies, History of
Village-level solar power in Africa
Pathways to electricity for all
Households as infrastructure junctions in urban sustainability transitions
The integration of infrastructure domains and resource flows such as electricity, heat, water and waste increasingly gains currency in strategies to achieve more resource-efficient, smart and resilient cities. While widely discussed concepts of a nexus of resource systems, such as energy–water–food, aim at a more optimised and integrative management of resource flows, this article investigates how infrastructure integration is accomplished throug…
From sustainable to smart
An agenda for sustainability transitions research
Passive houses as affiliative objects
Celebrating a decade of Eist
An agenda for future Social Sciences and Humanities research on energy efficiency
Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)—including critical reflections on what changing a society’s relation to energy (efficiency) even means—have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policymakers, funders, and other decision-makers when driving research agendas, and (ii) the setting of SSH-…
A politics of calculation
New building codes and stricter regulation of energy consumption and CO2 emissions have become key strategies to support the low-carbon transition of the housing sector. Such regulations rest heavily on setting performance targets for buildings and developing standardized calculation procedures for determining the compliance of new buildings with the building code. While developing such targets, standards and calculation tools are largely present…
Knowledge management in transition management
Despite the extensive literature on learning in urban transitions, we still have a limited understanding on how higher-order learning takes place in transition management and is spread within the transition arena. In this paper we analyze the efforts of transferring such embedded knowledge and its interrelation with learning through the examples of three Swedish municipalities engaged in urban transition management. To do so, we developed a frame…
Assessing transformative change of infrastructures in urban area redevelopments
Urban redevelopments create opportunities for experimenting with innovative infrastructural solutions towards transformative urban change. Novel solutions such as decentralised infrastructure systems can become essential strategies for helping cities meet multiple sustainability outcomes. However, achieving infrastructural change is a tremendous challenge given the obduracy of these large and complex systems. Assessing and monitoring ongoing infr…
A perspective on the future of sustainability transitions research
The journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (EIST) recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. Its development represents a great success, contributing substantially to the consolidation and maturation of the research field of sustainability transitions. However, being content with past successes will not be sufficient for tackling emerging challenges. In this perspective paper, we take stock of recent dynamics in the field by an…
Competing Transport Futures
The choice of fuels has frequently been at the center of debates about how a future low-carbon mobility system can be achieved. This paper introduces two visions of biogas fuels and electricity using material from interviews and documents in Swedish transport. These visions are analyzed as interrelated sociotechnical imaginaries. To better understand the way visions of biogas and electric vehicles (EVs) dynamically shape and condition each other,…
Urban transition interventions in the Global South
Changing power relations and the empowerment of frontrunners are considered crucial preconditions for sustainability transitions. This paper looks into the empowerment of actors in the context of a transition intervention in the Global South. We argue that empowerment is of particular importance in contexts of the Global South or those with illiberal characteristics. A holistic understanding of empowerment is needed to improve transition governan…
Economics (24 obras) · Business (22 obras) · Political science (22 obras) · Sociology (21 obras) · Engineering (18 obras) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (18 obras) · Computer Science (15 obras) · Sustainability (14 obras) · Environmental economics (11 obras) · Geography (11 obras)