Low-carbon innovation in China 2013-2017

Data collected for this project consisted of notes, written up contemporaneously, from semi-structured interviews and focus groups regarding responses to and/or activity regarding specific low-carbon innovations across three domains: solary energy, urban electric mobility and maize agriculture. Each case study conducted between 30 and 50 interviews and 3-5 focus groups of approximately 6 or 7 people in diverse locations across China, relevant to the particular case study. Interviews were focused on experts and significant stakeholders, including from government, business, academia and civil society/NGOs. Focus groups were focused on diverse groups of users, actual or potential, of the relevant low-carbon innovations at 'street-level' for a 'bottom-up' perspective.
<p>China's efforts towards low-carbon transition matter profoundly for the whole world. Going beyond issues of technology alone, this project explores the prospects for transition understood from a broader systems perspective, acknowledging their 'socio-technical' nature and the crucial dimension of shifting power relations. Using a methodology (‘backward mapping’) that compares the actual practices of users expected by policy/ corporate strategy to adopt low-carbon technologies with those as imagined by such high-level actors, a more informative picture is furnished about what, how and why low-carbon innovations are succeeding or failing.
This project explores three domains: energy (solar PV vs. solar thermal), urban mobility (electric vehicles vs. electric bikes) and agriculture (GM vs. agro-ecological maize), in each case comparing the globally-dominant model of high-technology, IP-intensive innovation favoured by current Chinese 'indigenous innovation' policy and an alternative model successfully mobilizing other indigenous innovation resources, but without such government support.
The project aims to improve understanding of: strengths and weaknesses of different low-carbon policies and strategies; the qualitative nature of socio-political change associated with such innovation; and possible effects of emergent Chinese low-carbon innovation on the UK.</p>