Abstract
The prospect of enabling more sustainable industries through energy efficiency innovations has received increased attention in policy and research. In Norway, previous studies have identified a techno-economic potential of 12 TWh reduction in direct energy use and an additional 10 TWh utilization of surplus heat, in industries. However, the novelty and complexity of energy efficient technologies can make their adoption, and hence utilizing this potential, difficult. This paper explores the development and implementation of two high-temperature heat pumps and one heat recovery concept in three R&D projects in the Norwegian manufacturing industry. Our qualitative research finds and explores three implementation paradoxes: 1) While the novelty of innovations partly explains why they are difficult to implement, novelty is also a motivator for firms' technology development strategies. 2) Both innovations close to core production technologies, as well as seemingly incremental innovations, can have system-wide consequences in the organizations, making them difficult to implement. 3) While implementation windows (changes to organizations and technical systems) positively affect firms’ motivation, ability, and opportunity to develop and adopt innovations, these situations introduce time constraints, putting pressure on less mature technical solutions and R&D processes. Through unpacking these seemingly opposing dynamics, we find that the same factors can both promote and inhibit adoption of technologies during different stages of innovation processes. We discuss the managerial implications on how firms can align R&D collaborations with implementation opportunities, to enhance adoption of radical energy efficiency innovations. In conclusion, we discuss how these contributions can translate into future quantitative research.
Highlights
Improved industrial energy efficiency is pivotal in climate change mitigation and the transition to more sustainable production
This paper provides knowledge on how radical efficiency innovations (EEIs) can be devel oped in R&D projects and implemented in practice
By studying dy namics that occur in companies in-depth, as called for by Chai and Baudelaire (2015), we extend on the energy efficiency literature by addressing research gaps on how novelty (RQ1), complexity (RQ2) and implementation windows (RQ3) affect development and adoption of EEIs
Summary
Improved industrial energy efficiency is pivotal in climate change mitigation and the transition to more sustainable production. ‘low- hanging fruits’, more attention is being paid to technologies with high potential for energy reductions, such as industrial heat pumps (Kosmadakis, 2019) and energy recovery systems (Papapetrou et al, 2018). These technologies have larger implications for in dustrial plants, making them more difficult to implement (they are ‘high-hanging’, to complete the fruit metaphor). Such technologies are increasingly being labeled as energy efficiency innovations (EEIs) (Solnørdal and Thyholdt, 2019).
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