Research for the Transformation 8.1 Table 8.1-2 Criteria for the analysis of research funding strategies and programmes.
Source: WBGU Analysis field
Requirements
Criteria
Goals
Climate-compatibility
Sole aim, partial goal, subordinate; conflicting aims
Embedding in the context of sustainability
Reflection of the interactive impact of own research subject with other environmental problems, effects on sustainable growth and global equity in distribution
Interdisciplinarity
Cooperation between engineering and natural sciences, or social sciences
Social relevance
Diffusion of research results to policy-makers and society
Transdisciplinarity
Co-operation with stakeholders
Acceleration
Political priority, adequate funding
International scope
Integration of scientists from non-OECD countries
Technological and social innovations
Generation of low-carbon alternatives to existing technologies and social practices; solution-orientation
Conditions for diffusion of innovations
Consideration of global diffusion, acceptance and national or international framework conditions
Political strategies
Development and discussion of political measures for the improvement of diffusion conditions, or transformation realisation
Structure
Results
energy-efficient buildings (EU COM, 2010a), and the Knowledge and Innovation Centers (Climate KIC, 2011) within the scope of the European Institute of Technol ogy (EIT) were also considered.
Goals Most of these programmes feature climate-friendly ness as a direct or indirect partial goal – either in the form of integration in broader environmental protec tion targets, or as part of the more general objective of responding to social challenges. Even if climatefriendlyness is a directly stated goal, as is the case, for example, in the PPP roadmap for (more) energy-effi cient buildings or the SET Plan, its level of importance is almost always equal to economic development and/ or competitiveness goals. Climate-friendlyness is not a goal of the Joint Technology Initiative. One of the stated objectives of Joint Programming is the financing of research to find solutions to social challenges. Of the three major aspects of sustainable develop ment – ecology, economy, society – most of the strat egies and programmes analysed directly and promi nently address the aspects of economic development and environmental protection. Social development aspects are only taken into account in the Green Paper on the development of the European Research Area.
Structure All programmes and strategies analysed include inter disciplinary cooperation as a potential form of coop eration. The strategy for the creation of a single Euro pean Research Area also envisages the promotion of measures to support interdisciplinary research. How ever, none of the strategies analysed explicitly demand a commitment to interdisciplinarity, nor are the neces sarily participating disciplines precisely qualified. Only the PPP roadmap for (more) energy-efficient buildings formulates a few open research issues, thereby sug gesting that engineering and social sciences must coop erate to address these. The individual components of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan envisage purely technical research projects without any input from the social sciences. Stakeholder cooperation is an option within the scope of all of the EU policies analysed, and, in most cases, an explicitly named goal. The process of creat ing an European Research Area names public-private cooperation as an explicit goal. However, cooperation is not described in detail as the documents analysed are broader strategies or frameworks. With a few excep tions, if there is any elaboration at all on the form stakeholder cooperation is to take, this usually involves only corporations. They are also the only stakeholders considered for direct involvement in the research pro cess. Society and policy-makers are usually named as
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