Socio-Technical Pathways of Sweden’s Electricity Transition

Sammanfattning

Social acceptance and political feasibility are central yet often under-addressed dimensions of low-carbon electricity transitions. As quantitative energy models frequently struggle to represent these socio-political dynamics, this thesis applies socio-technical scenarios as a methodological approach to extend conventional energy system modelling. Building on the eight-step procedure developed by Geels et al. (2020), the study combines a stylized multi-period linear programming model using milestone years (2030, 2040, and 2050) with a Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) analysis of regime, niche, and landscape dynamics in the Swedish electricity system over the past two decades. The concept of transition bottlenecks is introduced as a methodological bridge between future-oriented techno-economic pathways and socio-technical path dependencies. These bottlenecks help structure a dialogue between model-generated transition pathways and the institutional, political, and socio-cognitive conditions shaping their implementation. The identified bottlenecks subsequently guide the development of socio-technical storylines describing how the social acceptance and political feasibility of fossil-free transitions could plausibly evolve through changes in governance arrangements, actor strategies, public discourse, and policy frameworks. The thesis contributes by developing two internally consistent socio-technical pathways (Pathway A and Pathway B) through a simplified optimization framework representing alternative governance logics for the Swedish electricity transition. The analysis identifies major socio-technical bottlenecks affecting electricity-generation pathways, including nuclear financing, wind permitting, offshore security conflicts, solar policy support, and grid expansion. It further develops exploratory storylines illustrating how these barriers could plausibly be mitigated under different institutional and political conditions.