Green Transition Policy Centre

GreenTraC is an interdisciplinary project aimed at understanding the determinants of green transition policy and its effects on transition processes. The project seeks to make three major contributions:

Theory: It aims to develop a comprehensive theory of transition policy, emphasizing the handling of increasing complexity and supporting a fast transition.
Methods: It plans to pioneer combined methodological approaches, including natural language processing, generative artificial intelligence, network analysis, and in-depth qualitative analysis, to study green transition policy.
Empirics: It intends to develop a systematic comparison of green transition policy cases to accumulate evidence-based general knowledge on such policy processes.

The project focuses on policy mixes for decarbonisation of agrifood, energy-intensive industries, and maritime transport. It aims to advance knowledge on how policy processes can accelerate and handle the complexity of the advanced phase of the energy transition. The approach is comparative, interdisciplinary, and open, aiming to generate novel and general knowledge about policy design and governance conditions that influence the success of green transition policies.

Interdisciplinarity is central to all work packages, with collaboration across social science and data science being essential. The project also emphasizes openness, with the intention to share methods, workflows, indicators, and datasets for mapping and analysis of green transition policy via open-access, open-source, and reproducible means.

Innovation policy increasingly aims at stimulating transitions toward sustainability in systems delivering essential goods and services. The scientific breakthrough pursued in GreenTraC is a consolidated theory of green transition policy with focus on the possibilities for policy to address the complexity and requirement of speed that characterise the advanced phase of the energy transition.