Disruptive low carbon innovations

Panel: 9. Consumption and behaviour

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Charlie Wilson, Tyndall Centre, United Kingdom

Abstract

Mitigating climate change requires disruptive low carbon innovations to challenge prevailing technologies or practices and lead to step change reductions in emissions when adopted at scale. Disruptive innovations are distinctive in offering novel product or service attributes to end users. Many potentially disruptive low carbon innovations exist today, but in small numbers. As examples, car clubs, car sharing, and reuse networks challenge mainstream consumer attributes of ownership, autonomy and status.

This paper investigates the potential for disruptive innovations to transform the market for energy-related goods and services. First, we consider the key concepts of disruption innovation, and propose a set of characteristics that define disruptive low carbon innovations. Second, we review sectoral and economy-wide studies of low carbon innovation, and use our set of characteristics as screening criteria to identify potentially disruptive innovations. We focus particularly on innovations relating to mobility. Third, we draw on innovation case studies to identify the novel attributes offered by these disruptive low carbon innovations. We assign rankings to these attributes and map how they compare across different innovations. We find that attributes common to different innovations include offering greater variety of choice, having a relational aspect, and being pay-per-use. Fourth, we use data from a small survey of innovation experts to evaluate a set of mobility-related innovations by their potential disruptiveness and their potential emissions impact. We find six mobility-related innovations that score highly on both criteria: mobility-as-a-service, car clubs, ride-sharing, e-bikes, telecommuting, and electric vehicles. These are predominantly characterised by a shift towards mobility becoming a pay-per-use service.