Taminiau, Job B.2016-02-252016-02-252015http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/17491Climate change poses significant complications to the development model employed by modern societies. Using paradigm analysis, the dissertation explains why, after 21 years, policy failure haunts the field: a key impediment is the unquestioned assumption that policy must adhere to an economic optimality principle. This results in policy models which fail to uphold sustainability, justice, and equality due to an emphasis on economic growth, technology, and technical and bureaucratic expertise. Unable to build consensus among low- and high-carbon economies, and searching for what one economist has called an oxymoron - "sustainable growth" (Daly, 1997) - the policy process has foundered with its only international convention (the Kyoto Protocol) having lost relevance. In the midst of this policy failure, the dissertation offers and defends the premise that alternative strategies have emerged which signal the prospect of a paradigm shift to ecological sustainability - a paradigm in which social change takes places through commons-based management and community authorship in the form of network governance and where sustainability serves as governor of growth - something unavailable in an optimality-guided world. Especially, a strategy of polycentricity is discussed in detail in order to elucidate the potential for a paradigm shift. This discussion is followed by an evaluation of two innovative concepts - the Sustainable Energy Utility and the Solar City - that might fit the polycentricity strategy and bring forth transformative change. The dissertation finds considerable potential rests in these two concepts and argues the critical importance of further development of innovative approaches to implement the ecological sustainability paradigm.Paradigms (Social sciences)Sustainability.Renewable energy sources.Social change.Climatic changes.Thesis940957696