News

The Chair of Sustainability and Transformation Research is represented at the IST conference "International Sustainabitily Transitions" (IST). Our two contributions include a full paper contribution by Sarah Olbrich "Policy Mix for energy sector integration in Germany - Challenges and Strategies" and a speed talk by Caterina Pacini "Addressing the challenges of system building: an overview of strategies to deal with new lock-in and path dependencies in the transition process".

This year's conference theme is "Responsibility and reflexivity in transitions". For more information on our contributions can be found here: Sarah Olbrich and Caterina Pacini.

On June 26, 2023, the Schader Foundation and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences invite you to the symposium "Transdisciplinary Research: Review and Perspectives" at the Schader Forum. The event takes the retirement of Dr. Bettina Brohmann (Öko-Institut e.V.) as an opportunity to take stock and look ahead: What insights can be gained from the experiences of the past decades? What are the prospects for the role of science in processes of social change? What does this mean for the future funding landscape?

Dierk Bauknecht will participate in the roundtable discussion "Establishing New Cultures and Practices of Scientific Collaboration - In 25 Years from Shaping Sustainable Transformation to the ITD Alliance".

More information on the event can be found on the Schader Foundation's website.

In May, Sarah Olbrich participated in a workshop on transformation research called "Exploring multi-system phenomena in net-zero transitions". The workshop was organized by Allan Dahl Andersen, Karoline Rogge and Frank Geels.

The interaction of different socio-technical systems (multi-system interaction) plays a central role in the decarbonization of the respective systems, such as mobility, buildings or heating. This multisystem interaction and the potential synergies that result from such interaction are of high importance for reaching greenhouse gas neutrality.

Within sustainability transformation research, there is already a small but growing branch of research on multisystem interactions that investigates the complexity of multisystem interactions. Although this research branch already offers relevant insights, cross-system research on transformations remains expandable. Therefore, the goal of the workshop was to gain a deeper understanding of multisystem interactions, strengthen the academic community on multisystem phenomena in sustainability transformations, and develop a new research agenda for multisystem transformations.

Master of Environmental Governance graduate Caterina Pacini has started her position as PhD student at the Chair of Sustainability and Transformation Research. She will work on issues related to the transformation to low-carbon industrial clusters, path dependencies, lock-ins, reflexive governance and the question of how to link academic and applied research.

"The climate neutrality network is a giant step" say energy experts Franzsika Flachsbarth and Prof. Dr. Dierk Bauknecht. They are optimistic that the expansion of the German transmission grid - which is necessary for the energy transition but has been delayed for a long time - can now pick up speed. However, an important set screw is how the remuneration of network operators will be regulated in the future.

The interview was conducted by Jörg-Rainer Zimmermann for the energy transition magazine "Neue Energie".

Read the interview here.