Escaping carbon lock-in

This article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in Understanding carbon lock-in (Unruh, 2000), which posited that industrial countries have become locked-into fossil fuel-based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale, Carbon lock-in arises through technological, organizational, social and institutional co-evolution, culminating in what was termed as techno-institutional complex (TIC). In order to resolve the climate problem, an escape from the lock-in condition is required. However, due to the self-referential nature of TIC, escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.