Growing Grassroots Innovations: Exploring the Role of Community-Based Initiatives in Governing Sustainable Energy Transitions

TLDR

Sustainable development challenges such as climate change and peak oil demand system‑wide transformations, and recent coevolutionary innovation literature has begun to map the dynamics of such sociotechnical transitions, though it has largely focused on market‑based technological innovations. This study applies coevolutionary innovation theory to civil‑society initiatives, specifically the UK’s Transition Towns movement, to examine how community‑based actions can drive a low‑carbon sustainable economy. The authors conduct empirical research on the Transition Towns movement, evaluating how these grassroots initiatives attempt to expand and influence broader sociotechnical systems. The study offers practical recommendations for Transition Towns to diffuse beyond their niche—deepening engagement with regime actors, managing expectations through tangible action opportunities, and adopting a community‑based action model—while highlighting theoretical refinements needed to account for internal niche dynamics, identity formation, and social practice change.

Abstract

The challenges of sustainable development (and climate change and peak oil, in particular) demand system-wide transformations in sociotechnical systems of provision. An academic literature around coevolutionary innovation for sustainability has recently emerged as an attempt to understand the dynamics and directions of such sociotechnical transformations, which are termed ‘sustainability transitions’. This literature has previously focused on market-based technological innovations. Here we apply it to a new context of civil-society-based social innovation and examine the role of community-based initiatives in a transition to a low-carbon sustainable economy in the UK. We present new empirical research from a study of the UK's Transition Towns movement (a ‘grassroots innovation’) and assess its attempts to grow and influence wider societal sociotechnical systems. By applying strategic niche management theory to this civil society context, we deliver theoretically informed practical recommendations for this movement to diffuse beyond its niche: to foster deeper engagement with resourceful regime actors; to manage expectations more realistically by delivering tangible opportunities for action and participation; and to embrace a community-based, action-oriented model of social change (in preference to a cognitive theory of behaviour change). Furthermore, our study indicates areas where theory can be refined to better explain the growth and broader impacts of grassroots innovations—namely, through a fuller appreciation of the importance of internal niche processes, by understanding the important role of identity and group formation, and by resolving how social practices change in grassroots innovations.