Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CINTRAN (Carbon Intensive Regions in Transition - Unravelling the Challenges of Structural Change)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-11-01 al 2023-04-30
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.
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.