E-Trans 2050

Reducing greenhouse gases by 80%, as demanded by the IPCC, is one of the great long-term challenges facing our societies today and will doubtless require transformative changes to current energy regimes. Large-scale system transitions such as the one envisaged for the global energy system in the next 30-40 years can only be realized through complex processes of change involving global, regional, national, and local levels. In this paper we use sociotechnical scenario analysis to contribute ideas for the transformative change of the current Austrian energy system over the long term and to identify some of the particular policy measures, as well as structural changes and broader shifts in perspective, that would be necessary to deal with such challenges. There is less emphasis on the technical issues involved than on the socio-economic and governance requirements such a shift would demand. We also explain our experiences with the sociotechnical scenario process and its outcomes. In particular, we identify examples of some critical issues and opportunities within one of the identified key action fields and discuss their various implications for energy policy and everyday practices.

Economic growth rates as well as energy consumption rates have never been risen to such an exponentially amount as they did last decades. The pressure on the eco-system is immense: energy resources are exploited and GHG emissions cause temperature rise leading to climate change. Energy as one of the pillars of economic growth plays a crucial role in production and consumption processes. The paper wants to explore if a decline in energy supply necessarily leads to stadium of economic degrowth. Neoclassical and other approaches and their empirical findings give no clear results what the causal relationship between energy and economic growth is. Subsequently, the emerging degrowth movement is explored to reflect on the influence of spatial planning decisions, land use and energy on economic growth going further with some considerations about energy efficiency and energy exporting countries and their impact on economic growth. The paper concludes that the impact of energy on degrowth remains unclear but a fall in energy resource use is unavoidable.