‘Climate Agency’. Assessing Societal Drivers of Low-Carbon Transformations

The global community has adopted ambitious targets for attaining climate neutrality at the Paris climate conference in 2015. The scope, depth and speed of this intended transformation poses highly complex problems of political steering and social coordination. Societal dynamics are key drivers and obstacles for such a transformation. However, methods for systematically studying social dynamics of decarbonization across different sectors of society are lacking. Such methods are needed to assess if low-carbon transformations are not only technically and economically possible, but also plausible from a social science perspective.

The paper presents a framework for assessing the societal dynamics of low-carbon transformations and operationalizes it with regards to Germany. The framework draws on the methodology of the Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook (Stammer et al. 2021; Engels et al. 2023). It complements approaches based on techno-economic models, sociotechnical transitions, or social tipping points, by placing the focus on societal processes that act as social drivers of low-carbon transformations. The paper analyzes the dynamics and context conditions of selected drivers, and shows how these affect societal agency to shape climate futures, or ‘climate agency’.