Governance of Change in Sustainability Transitions

Abstract

Texel has signed a shared ambition manifesto together with the other Dutch Wadden Islands, which states that they desire to reach full self-succiciency in terms of water and (renewable) energy by 2020. It is safe to assume that neither of these ambitions will be reached in time on Texel. Because technical limitations are not necessarily the reason for this, the question why is studied through theories of governance of change. This thesis has two goals. The first goal is to create an analytical framework to analyze processes of governance of change in socio-technical systems. The second is to apply this framework on the socio-technical energy- and water systems on Texel in order to learn about how the governance of change has contributed to the current state of these systems, compared to Texel's ambitions.

What was learned from Texel is that the successfulness of strategies in the governance of change depends on the nature and context of the system. For example: mobilizing people to found energy cooperation TexelEnergie was successful because the energy market in place allowed an opportunity for such an initiative to work. Secondly, the Texel Core Values could be successfully utilized to shift the direction of change from windmills and bio- fermentation to solar energy and energy savings, because the decentralized nature of the system allowed social actors to guide change on their own terms, based on the cultural values of Texel. In contrast, in the water system these strategies would not work because the drinking water market is closed and regulated by governmental actors, meaning that there is no opportunity present for societal actors to mobilize and start producing their own drinking water. In that regard, legitimacy for change is absent since they depend on the support of drinking water company PWN, which is merely concerned with providing a reliable drinking water infrastructure and is legally bound to provide this in the most cost-effective and safe way possible. Hence, they are not interested in changing the existing centralized drinking water system towards a system where drinking water is produced on the island, simply because it is desired by Texel.

This thesis covered a dual case study where the governance of change in the socio-technical energy and water systems on Texel was analyzed. Generalization from single case studies is a controversial topic and requires extrapolation that can never be fully justified because findings are always embedded within a context. In this study, the findings from the previous section are embedded in a specific context that is unique to Texel. Because of this it would be premature to express any generalistic and legitimate conclusions about governance of change in socio-technical systems based on the findings of these case studies alone. Such claims warrant similar analysis of other socio-technical systems, preferably also water and energy systems but in different settings (settings here referring to different locations or communities). This is proposed as topics for future research.