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  • Perspective
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Policy-driven growth of technologies to accelerate climate action

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

More than 70% of climate policies target low-carbon technologies, with hopes that policy support will trigger tipping points and self-reinforcing growth. In practice, however, trajectories of policy-driven technologies remain difficult to explain and anticipate because their growth is nonlinear and often constrained by backlash, policy reversals and systemic barriers. In this Perspective, we develop a framework to explain, diagnose, and anticipate the growth of policy-driven technologies through four phases. In the formative phase, rapid innovation, uncertainties and frequent failures lead to erratic growth; in the accelerating growth phase, increasing economic and political returns progressively increase deployment speed; in the steady growth phase, emerging barriers dampen acceleration leading to a pattern in which growth pulsates around its peak; and in the slowdown phase, barriers stall growth and technology reaches its limits. Surprisingly, the scale and complexity of supporting policies do not necessarily diminish as technologies mature. Effective acceleration requires phase-specific policies to support technical and commercial viability in the formative phase, amplify increasing returns in the accelerating growth phase, manage barriers in the steady growth phase, and withdraw or reinvigorate support during the slowdown phase. Further advancing this phase-aware understanding of the co-evolution of policy and technology is essential for improving climate policy design and for developing more realistic technology projections and climate mitigation scenarios.

Key points

  • The majority of climate policies target technological change creating a large class of policy-driven technologies. Similar to other technologies, their growth is nonlinear, and they are further shaped by feedback within policy systems.

  • Policy-driven technologies advance through four phases, which are shaped by specific configurations of mechanisms, leading to distinct growth dynamics, and requiring phase-specific policy interventions.

  • The steady growth phase is often overlooked; however, this is the phase in which technologies reach their fastest growth rate and long-term deployment level is largely determined. Growth in this phase typically pulsates around a relatively stable cruising speed close to the peak growth rate, reflecting feedbacks between technology expansion and policy change.

  • The meaning of policy-driven technology acceleration is phase-specific: it means earlier takeoff in the formative phase; extending quasi-exponential growth during the accelerating growth phase; sustaining faster growth over longer periods in the steady growth phase; and restarting growth in the slowdown phase.

  • Even after technologies become economically competitive, policy effort does not automatically decline. Instead, policy portfolios expand and diversify over time, often retaining substantial financial support, as they address a widening set of barriers.

  • Phase-aware thinking is essential for effective policy advice and for producing more realistic climate and energy scenarios that account for the co-evolution of climate policies and technologies.

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Fig. 1: Co-evolution of climate policies and low-carbon technologies.
Fig. 2: The four phases of policy-driven technology growth.
Fig. 3: Examples of each technology growth phase.
Fig. 4: Pulsating growth of policy-driven technologies.
Fig. 5: Policy support during technology growth.

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Acknowledgements

J.J., M.S., L.N., A.J. and T.K. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ERC Starting Grant programme under grant agreement no. 950408 for Mechanisms and Actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST). A.C. received support from the MISTRA Electrification research programme funded by the Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research (MISTRA). J.T. received support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ERC Advanced Grant programme under grant agreement no. 882601 for Deep Decarbonisation: The Democratic Challenge of Navigating Governance Traps (DeepDCarb) and from the Research Council of Norway under grant agreement no. 335073 for the ‘Accelerating climate action and the state: getting to net zero’ (ACCELZ) project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Physical Resource Theory, Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Jessica Jewell, Masahiro Suzuki, Lola Nacke, Avi Jakhmola & Vadim Vinichenko

  2. Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation, Department of Geography, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Jessica Jewell & Tsimafei Kazlou

  3. Advancing Systems Analysis Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Jessica Jewell

  4. Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Vienna, Austria

    Aleh Cherp & Senjuty Bhowmik

  5. International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Aleh Cherp

  6. Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Frank W. Geels

  7. Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jale Tosun

  8. Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Jale Tosun

Authors
  1. Jessica Jewell
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  2. Aleh Cherp
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  3. Frank W. Geels
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  4. Masahiro Suzuki
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  5. Lola Nacke
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  6. Jale Tosun
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  7. Senjuty Bhowmik
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  8. Tsimafei Kazlou
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  9. Avi Jakhmola
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  10. Vadim Vinichenko
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Contributions

Conceptualization: J.J. and A.C. Analysis and visualization: M.S., V.V., L.N., S.B., T.K. and A.J. Writing: J.J., A.C., F.W.G., M.S., L.N., T.K., J.T. and A.J. Funding acquisition: J.J., A.C. and J.T.

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Correspondence to Jessica Jewell.

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Supplementary information

Glossary

Accelerating growth phase

The technology growth phase that immediately follows takeoff, when technological expansion, cost decline and performance improvements reinforce each other leading to progressively faster growth.

Baseline

An expected trajectory or outcome that would occur without additional policy change and against which policy effort can be measured; ‘no-policy’ or ‘current policy’ baselines are often used.

Cruising speed

The average growth rate in the steady growth phase around which growth might fluctuate owing to pulses of acceleration and deceleration.

Early adopters

Entities (for example, users, firms, or countries) who are among the first to start using technology despite its high costs and below optimal performance.

Formative phase

Initial phase of technology development when a technology is limited to niche applications and constrained by high costs and poor performance leading to erratic growth and high failure rates; typically defined as deployment less than 1–2% of the market.

Frontrunners

Entities (for example, countries or firms) that introduce a technology first and lead its development; sometimes referred to as the ‘technology core’.

Growth pulses

A period of growth that includes acceleration, reaching a peak growth speed, and deceleration.

Incumbents

Actors associated with established technologies, for example, fossil fuel companies.

Increasing returns

A process whereby each additional unit of a technology that is deployed makes subsequent deployment easier, cheaper and more beneficial, creating positive feedback loops in which growth becomes self-reinforcing.

Latecomers

Entities (for example, countries or firms) that introduce a technology after frontrunners, benefiting from their innovations and experience; sometimes referred to as ‘technology periphery’.

Logistic growth model

A mathematical model used to represent the S-curve under which the growth rate (first derivative) accelerates to a maximum rate at a single inflection point before symmetrically slowing down as the deployment level (function value) asymptotically approaches its upper limit.

Market-driven technologies

A technology whose growth is primarily driven by market forces with limited policy interventions.

Peak growth

The maximum rate of technology expansion, which occurs at the inflection point of a simple S-curve, sometimes calculated as G; in reality, growth can experience multiple peaks.

Policy diffusion

Process by which policy innovations spread across jurisdictions over time.

Policy-driven acceleration

Increase in the speed of technology deployment against the baseline through policy interventions.

Policy-driven technologies

A technology whose deployment and growth are actively promoted by policies to achieve societal objectives such as climate change mitigation, energy security or industrial development.

Ratcheting-up

The process by which a climate policy becomes stronger over time by imposing stricter requirements, more ambitious targets and/or covering more sectors and activities.

Scaling-back

The process by which a climate policy becomes weaker or is removed over time, leading to weaker requirements, less ambitious targets and/or covering fewer sectors and activities.

S-curve

The typical pattern of technology deployment, featuring rapid initial acceleration towards peak growth (at the inflection point) followed by slowdown and eventual saturation as a technology reaches its limits.

Slowdown phase

Also called ‘saturation’ or ‘stagnation’ phase, is when a technology reaches its limits and growth consistently slows down or stalls.

Steady growth phase

The technology growth phase when growth drivers and barriers balance each other; the growth remains fast but is no longer consistently accelerating and growth pulses are common.

Technology diffusion

A process by which new technologies spread across different user groups, markets and jurisdictions.

Technology growth phases

A period of a technology deployment characterized by a specific configuration of drivers and barriers leading to distinct growth dynamics.

Takeoff

The point when the formative phase ends as a technology becomes technically viable and expands beyond initial niches with the growth becoming consistently faster.

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Jewell, J., Cherp, A., Geels, F.W. et al. Policy-driven growth of technologies to accelerate climate action. Nat Rev Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-026-00765-3

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