Bottom-up, social innovation for addressing climate change

Abstract

Innovation is essential for addressing climate change. It is recognised that technological innovation alone is insufficient, and we suggest that a greater focus on research, policy and practice in the area of bottom-up, social innovation could yield benefits if integrated into wider considerations of research and policy development concerning climate change. Taking social innovation to include behaviour and lifestyle changes, energy saving through new forms of business and governance, and users employing new technical solutions, we identify these as warranting more research, policy and support. Bottom-up innovation emerges from the interaction of less powerful actors and meets regulatory, institutional and resource barriers that its primary stakeholders have less ability to overcome. Similarly, non-technical innovation, where potential savings are unknown or hard to quantify, is not coherently supported by existing policies, regulations, institutional frameworks and infrastructures. Without policy intervention there could be many missed opportunities for energy and emission reducing innovations.