Steering sustainability transitions? Modular participatory backcasting for strategic planning in the heating and cooling sector

Sammanfattning: Fostering sustainability transitions in the heating and cooling sector is a necessary and urgent issue. Steering mechanisms can enable coordination of actions by different actors towards common sustainability goals. Previous studies have identified requirements relevant for such steering frameworks, but have not specifically addressed planning in the highly contextual heating and cooling sector. Participatory backcasting (PB) possesses a number of relevant characteristics for use as a planning framework in this sector, but its adaptability and potential impact first need to be addressed.This thesis sought to advance strategic planning in the heating and cooling sector by improving the adaptability, transparency and reflexivity of PB processes and extending their impact beyond individuals directly involved, so-called social scales of impact. Key research objectives of the present work were to: (1) develop a strategic planning framework for the heating and cooling sector based on PB and examine its adaptability to local contexts, (2) develop methods for scenario development, selection and analysis to allow for co-informing between modelling and participatory processes within PB-based strategic planning, and (3) identify factors that could influence the social scales of the impact of participatory strategic planning processes.Objectives 1 and 2 were pursued in a multiple case study involving transdisciplinary research over one-year PB-based planning processes in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine (Case I) and Niš, Serbia (Case II). The social scales of impact (Objective 3) were studied in a single case – a Swedish project aimed at advancing the practice of long-term planning in regions ‘Region 2050’ (Case III). In all cases, both theoretical and empirical research were conducted.The study proposes a novel framework, modular participatory backcasting (mPB), for strategic planning in the heating and cooling sector. The framework integrates principles of modularity, participatory modelling, and transdisciplinarity. The results of mPB implementation in Case I and Case II suggest that the framework has acceptable adaptability to local contexts. Greater reflexivity and transparency in the scenario development, selection and analysis were achieved by developing a morphological method and implementation of participatory modelling approaches. Finally, boundary spanning individuals, collaborations and institutional plurality were identified in Case III as important factors for broadening the social scales of impact of participatory strategic planning processes.