Second-order sustainability – conditions for sustainable technology development in a dynamic environment

Innovations can be important means to the achievement of improved sustainability. Due to path dependencies, however, the transition from an existing technological trajectory to a more sustainable one is often impeded by significant barriers. These barriers themselves are subject to substantial change over time. Accordingly, periods of stability can be distinguished from periods of instability when a new trajectory can be reached more easily. Sustainable innovations often rely on governmental regulation and the economic burden arising from regulation will be lower in periods of instability. Moreover, innovations are generally associated with fundamental uncertainty such that it becomes impossible to predict the long-run consequences of specific innovations. Under these circumstances, it is essential to facilitate the change between trajectories. The general capability to change from less to more sustainable technological trajectories, or second-order sustainability, is therefore a precondition for achieving (first-order) sustainability. A number of factors (and corresponding indicators) from the techno-economic, political, and socio-cultural sphere are identified that help in judging whether, and possibly when, the incumbent industry is sufficiently destabilized and the political system rendered sufficiently favorable to the new, more sustainable technology to make a transition feasible.