Learning urban energy governance for system innovation: an assessment of transformative capacity development in three South Korean cities

This paper explores the preconditions and social learning processes that allow urban climate governance innovations and the solutions they engender to be transformative. It does so by assessing the capacity available to prepare for, initiate and steer a path-deviant sustainability transformation of the urban energy systems in three cities in South Korea - a country facing major challenges in this regard due to a heavy dependence on imported fossil energy resources and centralized institutions. The findings illustrate how synergies between local leadership, empowered communities of practice and trusted intermediation stand out as key drivers for learning transformative governance, in particular if linked to open experimentation, while also shaping the role of international exchange in this. In turn, national policy tends to constrain transformative capacity development and favor incremental modifications. Across all cities studied, major gaps still remain in terms of developing social learning processes that involve systems thinking, sustainability foresight, as well as suitable approaches for embedding more radical innovations. In conclusion, transformative capacity provides a useful lens to understand the potentials and limits of emerging urban governance innovations for unlearning dominant paradigms, and for triggering systemic change that enables more sustainable urban futures.