Open Access“It’s an Endurance Race”: An Indicator-Based Resilience Analysis of the Energy Transition in the Allgäu Region, Bavaria
Author(s) -
Susan Mühlemeier,
Claudia R. Binder,
Romano Wyss
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
gaia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.563
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 2625-5413
pISSN - 0940-5550
DOI - 10.14512/gaia.26.s1.7
Subject(s) - resilience (materials science) , transition (genetics) , diversity (politics) , process (computing) , state (computer science) , set (abstract data type) , energy transition , energy (signal processing) , transition layer , geography , psychological resilience , economic geography , political science , computer science , psychology , statistics , layer (electronics) , social psychology , mathematics , physics , alternative medicine , algorithm , law , chemistry , pathology , operating system , biochemistry , thermodynamics , panacea (medicine) , medicine , gene , programming language , organic chemistry
The Allgäu region in the state of Bavaria is one of the pioneering regions in the energy transition in Germany. To analyse the resilience of the transition process itself, we developed an indicator set for diversity and connectivity, two key elements to characterise the resilience of a system in transition.The energy transition currently taking place in Germany is recognised as being one of the most ambitious socio-technical transitions at the present time. Scholars have so far mostly studied the resilience of the current or future state of the energy system. They have neglected to analyse the resilience of the transition process itself. We present an interdisciplinary way of analysing the resilience of the energy transition operationalised as a socio-technical transition, using an indicator set for diversity and connectivity. For the case of the Allgäu region in the state of Bavaria, we measured these indicators in a semi-quantitative way, and found that the diversity indicators point to a resilient transition process. The connectivity indicators, however, show that the region is in a state such that the transition could stagnate. For the future of this transition process, connectivity should thus be increased, for example, by involving the tourism sector in the actor network. Our research confirms the need for an interdisciplinary analysis of the resilience of an energy transition.