Abstract
Regional councils find many roads to green growth:
The report discusses policies for green growth of a number of regional (or county) councils in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. These policies, which vary in scope, in ambition, and in degree of place-basedness, provide fertile meeting grounds for policy traditions for decarbonization of public services through public procurement and for innovation oriented growth initiatives. They mostly succeed maneuvering within constraints given by existing industrial structure and by inconsistencies in national and international policies, by leaning on second generation innovation system capabilities (correcting for market and systems failures) built over time. The more experimental initiatives involving a stronger directionality seem to benefit from place-based leadership in transforming both institutional settings and socio-cognitive orientations towards what it means to be green and to grow at the same time. Towards the end, we also discuss some challenges ahead, given that all regions are not equally well equipped for these transitions as the ones in our sample, and also given that the policy cases in our sample only to a smaller degree have addressed the heavier systemic restructurings required for successful transitions towards sustainability. Coordinated monitoring is recommended for systematic learning.