The Transition to Sustainable Energy and Institutional Inertia

The increase in energy consumption, especially fossil fuels, and its environmental effects, shown the necessity of transitioning to sustainable energy more than ever. However, in the transition to sustainable energy, laws, regulations, infrastructure, supply chains and interest groups with political power support the existing energy systems against any changes. As a result, the establishment of energy systems with clean and renewable technologies will be difficult. In this chapter, the approaches of new institutionalists about the transition to sustainable energy have been explained, especially, the literature of socio-technical transition (STT). In the STT approach, innovation is very important for sustainable change, so governance becomes important in empowering sustainable innovations and creating deep changes in energy systems. Also, in order to understand why different countries are transitioning to sustainable energy at different speeds and paths, the institutional inertia resulting from the resistance of existing energy systems and the role of path dependence in this regard have been analyzed. In the end, by providing evidence of the impact of path dependence on institutional inertia and the successful experience of some countries in the energy transition through the use of renewable energies, we have shown that although the transition is difficult, it is possible.