Deliverable 5.1: Literature review advancing the state of the art on the characterisation of social-ecological regional energy systems

This is the first Deliverable (D5.1) of the Work Package 5 (WP5) whose aim is to improve the understanding of the concept(s) of a region to be applied in regional socio-ecological energy systems. This review gathered insights from four literature reviews on Socio-Ecological Tipping Points (provided by our Tipping Plus partners from Work Packages 1 to 4: Human Geography, Environmental and Social Psychology, Policy and governance, and Economics); and from a systematic review on sustainability transitions research including sustainability studies, regional studies, and innovation studies. The Deliverable represents a “Report with literature review advancing the state of the art on the characterisation of social-ecological regional energy systems” (shortly called “WP5 Literature Report”). Approaching socio-ecological energy systems at the regional level can make climate change mitigation efforts more cohesive across scales. Urban studies recognize that regions tend to react more efficiently to global changes compared to nations. Yet, most energy transition approaches focus on the global, national, community, or single project level. On the one hand, community energy transition projects can be hardly upscaled. On the other hand, national approaches often fail to meet the needs and possibilities for transformation at the local level as well as to meet international agreements such as the EU climate change goals (Amundsen et al. 2018). Thus an in-between approach is needed to bridge climate change efforts across scales: a regional approach. This report is structured in four chapters. The Introduction chapter formulates the need to approach socio-ecological energy transitions from a regional level. Method and justification present the various sources of knowledge that this report considered as well as their analysis. The Results present a model to conceptualize a region. The model consists of three scales that categorize the dimensions of regions: 1) components, 2) processes and interrelatedness, and 3) concepts of a region. Finally, the Discussion elaborates on the state of the art, research gaps, and relevance of the findings for the Tipping Plus project.