Mismatch crises: Conceptualizing advanced energy transitions

Abstract

Renewable electrification - upstream switches to variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, combined with downstream electrification - implies a profound reconfiguration of the energy-society nexus. This is evidenced by significant frictions and political conflicts that intensify at the very moments at which the diffusion of the respective technologies gains pace. Existing transition scholarship has not sufficiently captured these dynamics since it lacks a conception of regime instability and trusts too optimistically in transition progress through economic and policy feedbacks. I leverage the concept of "mismatch" or "structural adjustment" crises from innovation economics to capture situations in which technology adoption happens broadly and quickly, while the development of integrative mechanisms adjusted to the demands of renewable energy lags behind. We see this evidenced by mismatch crises that manifest in three domains: Infrastructures facilitating energy production and use are maladapted to variable power; status orders are destabilized amid growing distributional conflict; and institutions of energy governance are not appropriately reformed. Identifying these manifestations of mismatch crisis does not automatically imply a need to slow down the transition but rather to explore much-needed reforms to establish the integrative foundations for societies powered by renewables.