Towards Low-carbon Energy Transitions with Diffusion of Multiple Low-carbon Innovations in Ontario

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), maintaining average global temperature rise within 1.5°C by 2030 is a far safer limit than 2°C because going beyond 1.5°C would have catastrophic results. The key to limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C within such a short timeframe is to destabilize the fossil fuel regime and accelerate the low-carbon systemic transformation. Disruptive low-carbon innovations are innovations that can result in reduction of fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which can speed up large-scale systemic transformation. However, the majority of existing low-carbon innovations are incremental not disruptive and the percentage of innovations that can be diffused into the mass market is only one third of total. In addition, current literature focuses on the supply-side innovations. However, compared to energy supply-side innovations, efficient demand-side technology innovations have higher social returns on investments according to large-scale modeling studies and larger potential to contribute to GHG emission reductions. This research, therefore has the purpose of identifying the factors that influence the disruptive potential of demand-side low-carbon innovations and exploring the diffusion of these disruptive innovations. Our research model is based on Clausen and Fichter’s work. We use dissemination rate to measure the diffusion of innovations. We also introduced a new dependent variable: system innovations to investigate the disruptive potential of low-carbon innovations and their potential contribution to low-carbon systemic transitions. We undertook desk research followed by two surveys and phone interviews to collect data for 132 demand-side low-carbon innovations. Our study is an important contribution to sustainability transitions research because it simultaneously analyzes multiple innovations across different sectors and policy domains. The results of this research show that the average dissemination rate of demand-side lowcarbon innovations is roughly 15%. 88% of these innovations have dissemination rate that are below 30%. Amongst all the demand-side low-carbon innovations, only 17% of them have disruptive potential to contribute to low-carbon energy transitions. The low dissemination rate and the low disruptive potential of demand-side low-carbon innovations are the results of lack of public assessable data, lack of attention and funding in the diffusion stage, insufficient support from policy instruments and neglect of democratization. Demand-side low-carbon innovations mostly focusing on energy efficiency also contribute to the low dissemination rate and low disruptive potential. To expand the diffusion of innovations and increase the disruptive potential of low-carbon innovations, data transparency should be improved. Additionally, more efforts should be put in diffusion stage. Innovation-specific policy instruments should be deployed to support disruptive innovations in the diffusion stage. A consistent and aligned policy mix across policy domains should be implemented to facilitate the low-carbon energy transitions. On top of that, low-carbon innovations should not only focus on energy efficiency, but should also provide energy users with new attributes of convenience, comfort, autonomy and democratization.