Dr Adam Doering gave this presentation at the National Energy Research Institute conference in Wellington, March 20-21, 2014.

1. Dr.Adam Doering, University of Otago
Dr. Rebecca Ford,Victoria University ofWellington
Energy Transitions in Transport:
Moving towards a more efficient NZ(?)

2. Energy Transitions in Transport (ETT)
1. NZ context and the need for change
2. Transitional thinking:An innovative focus?
3. Transport in transition
4. Patterns, problems and lessons learned
5. Moving forward: From innovation to purposeful transition?

3. NZ context & the need for change
New Zealand’s current transportation energy culture is highly dependent on
road transport and a car culture driven by fossil fuels.

4. Transitional thinking: An innovative focus?
Transport system
[now]
TRANSITION
Transport system
[future]
Transitioning towards what and whose future:
• What does not doing business-as-usual mean?
• How do we think transformational rather than incremental or
reformative transition is going to happen?

5. Ex. Chapman 2008:
Transitioning to a
low-carbon form in
NZ
Political ideologies
Societal values
Macro-economic
Exogenous-beyond
our control?????
ETT in NZ:
Innovations
Source: Geels, F.W. (2012)

6. Transport in Transition
Phase 4: Moving Forward
What can be learnt for future interventions?
Phase 3: Case Study Analysis
How were the changes produced? (trends/drivers/barriers)?
Phase 2: National Stocktake of ETT based on Case Studies
Who is currently engaging with ETT initiatives in NZ?
Phase 1: Identifying Potential Transitions
What lower carbon transportation transitions are available in NZ?

7. ETT Characteristics
Nationwide Stocktake:
85 cases covering 132 niche-innovations
• Regional/Local: 60% of initiatives were designed for local development
• Emergent: 75% of the cases identified a start date of 2006 or later
• Privately operated: Nearly 50% of the cases were private enterprises

8. 4 distinct transitional clusters:
Private sector: Practise
NGO & community advocacy
Private sector: Material
Local/Regional modal shifts

9. DriversforChange
0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00
Financial
Performance
Security
Regulatory
Policy
Environmental
Community
Social
Opportunity
Image
% of cluster
Local government initiatives Private sector material
Community and NGO advocacy Private sector practice
Distribution of motivations across the clusters

10. Drivers for Change by cluster
Private sector: Practise
NGO & community advocacy
Private sector: Material
Local/regional modal shifts
1. Financial
2. Environmental
3. Community
1. Environmental
2. Niche market
3. Financial
1. Environmental
2. Community
3. Resilience/energy security
1. Regulatory strategies
2. Social (health/quality of life)
3. Financial (Gov’t funding)
Market-driven
Socially directed engagements

11. Patterns, problems & lessons learned
1. Environmentally sustainable transport discourse
2. Rhetoric-reality gap
3. Silos of innovation
4. Low hanging fruit are BAU
5. Limits of visioning?
“Have you ever seen a revolution where no one got hurt?.. In the green revolution
we’re having, everyone’s a winner, nobody has to give up anything…That’s not a
revolution.That’s a party.” (Friedman,T. 2009: 150)

12. Moving forward: Society in pursuit of…
• Transitional visioning
• Not only a utopian end-point vision, but imagining and supporting the
potential, now, for a thousand little transitions, decenterings,
interruptions, and forceful cuts that interrupts BAU and mobilises
society to move in another direction.
• Diversity
• No more “silver bullets” and only fund the innovative transitions that are
“worthwhile pursuing”. Diversity as resilience means supporting and
even funding uncertainty.
• Connectivity & holistic frameworks
• Continue to seek out ways different innovative transitions can become
interconnected.

13. The critical questions today are…
• Who, or what, will “coordinate” this transition?
• Who, or what, directs the socio-cultural landscape?
• The overarching exogenous political ideologies, societal values,
and macro-economics of the socio-technical perspective?

14. An purposeful & transformational transition?
• Struggle
• Transformative transitions are taken; not organically unfolding
over time or driven by an invisible-hand.
• “Coordination”
• Refers to the importance of centralised forms of governance.
• Politics
• The problems and solutions of sustainable transport are political
ones. Government intervention will become increasingly
critical; what government style is necessary?
• Opportunity
• Transportation as a tool to reengage our attention to the
commons, public not private ownership, issues of social equality,
and on what and how much to consume and produce.

15. Thank you!
Auckland 2000, (Bernard Roundhill,1956) in Idealog September/October 2006, p. 114.