Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CINTRAN (Carbon Intensive Regions in Transition - Unravelling the Challenges of Structural Change) Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2023-04-30 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project The European Union has set itself the challenge to become the first climate-neutral continent. This is a tremendous endeavour regions which are home to large concentrations of carbon-intensive industries. Shutting down significant portions of the regional economy forces those regions to reinvent themselves in economic terms. Moreover, mining and heavy industry have often coined the regions’ identity, they have left their marks on the regional institutional and political structure and have shaped the regions in socio-demographic terms. The CINTRAN project will investigate the patterns and dynamics of structural change in those regions in order to help them to adapt. Our empirical work focusses on four highly carbon-intensive regions: Ida-Virumaa in Estonia, the Rhenish Mining area in Germany, Western Macedonia in Greece and Silesia in Poland. CINTRAN aims to provide a scientific evidence base to govern regional decarbonization processes, to design effective policies and coping strategies corresponding to this challenge and to support regional stakeholders in implementing strategies that enable them to engage proactively and constructively with the transformative processes in their respective regions. We will do so by creating new innovative knowledge, and by applying and diffusing this knowledge in carbon-intensive regions in the EU. As a result, CINTRAN will provide a better understanding of the complex issues related to regional structural change and yield practical recommendations for a just and successful clean-energy transition. Specifically, CINTRAN has the following objectives:- Establish a robust theoretical foundation for integrating diverse disciplinary insights of transformations in carbon-intensive regions and understanding how these transformations are shaped by injustice concerns.- Develop a generalizable understanding of the dynamics, patterns, costs and impacts of decarbonising carbon-intensive regions.- Identify successful coping strategies and policy mixes and quantify policy costs for successful and socially-responsible decarbonisation of carbon-intensive regions.- Provide tools for carbon-intensive regions to self-assess, monitor and compare their transition progress and develop policy recommendations for regional, national and European policy-makers.- Build a Regions in Transition Academy, Webinar Series and Knowledge base for knowledge exchange in carbon-intensive regions in transition. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far The CINTRAN project is making good progress towards achieving its objectives. Three complementary theoretical frameworks have been developed and introduced to the academic audience including through two published peer-reviewed articles. With respect to empirical work, good progress is being made. On preparatory work (determining research protocols) for the socio-economic, socio-political and socio-demographic analysis of structural change in the four case study regions has been completed and the empirical work is starting. As part of the quantitative empirical work an initial assessment of the 10-20 most vulnerable carbon-intensive regions based on a quantitative composite indicator has been completed. The assessment of coping strategies in carbon-intensive regions has proved to be particularly insightful with respect to empirical knowledge. The data collection on coping strategies will be completed by the end of 2021. Work on the tools for policy-makers is only scheduled to begin after the end of the first reporting period. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) Transition research has so far mostly focussed on successful transitions and the emergence of new, more sustainable technologies and practices. There is hardly any research on what the transformation of unsustainable socio-technical systems implies for their host regions. Regional studies and economic geography have studied spatial implications and the determinants of regional development but have also largely focussed on the bright side, highlighting the foundations of success stories of regional development. Only very limited research exists on why regional development fails. The CINTRAN project aims at closing this research gap by systematically studying the patterns and dynamics of decarbonization at the regional level as well as the conditions of a region’s capacity to adapt to the related structural changes. What are enablers, drivers and barriers for transforming carbon-intensive industries? What are the system overlaps between the carbon-intensive industry under transformation and the regional economic and social systems? And what makes a transition and subsequent structural adjustments “successful” from a normative perspective? Which structures condition structural change?Building on theoretical insights, CINTRAN will combine qualitative and quantitative methods to empirically study both structural factors as well as agency, i.e. the ways and means in which regional stakeholders and policy makers can manage the structural adjustments.Quantitative methods will be applied to identify key socio-economic implications of decarbonization for the 10-20 most vulnerable regions in Europe. We will break down the energy system implications of national climate and energy plans at the regional level and quantify their socio-economic impacts on regional value creation and employment. We will also take into account outward migration and political implications.Qualitative methods will be applied in These case studies will combine three analytical lenses:First, we will study the regions’ economic dependence from the carbon-intensive industry, also taking into account other mega-trends such as globalization, automation and digitalization. Second, we will study the institutional set-up and politics of decarbonization in the four regions, including with respect to the role of populism and anti-democratic attitudes. And third, we study aspects such as migration, gender and various dimensions of inequality that may impinge on a region’s capacity to manage the transition in a just and equitable way.CINTRAN will also study ways in which regional stakeholders and policy makers respond to the transformative changes at the political, economic, social or cultural level. We study coping strategies, practices that successfully restore or create agency and help regional stakeholders to adapt to changes. To support agency on the part of regional policy makers, we will develop a tool to help them to self-assess and monitor the progress of transformation and evaluate the policy mix in place to facilitate a just transition. The final step of the CINTRAN project is to make the knowledge available to practitioners and academics. To make our research outputs accessible, we will prepare dedicated materials targeted to regional stakeholders and policy makers including policy briefs, guidance documents, webinars as well as our flagship Transition Academy events, an intensive multi-day training programme. Project Logo
