Norway exemplifies a number of paradoxes in relation to the just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy provision. We investigate these paradoxes by focusing on key controversies from the oil and gas sector and onshore wind power. Despite the widespread interest in avoiding conflict and increasing public acceptance, this article sees controversies as useful sites for uncovering justice issues in possible transition pathways. The controversies reveal competing interpretations of just transition amidst an inadequate cross-cutting policy response. Conventional solutions for restructuring petro-maritime industries involve taking controversies out of sight from the public and internalizing the issue of just transition to the sector’s needs. This achieves only shallow engagement with broader society regarding the scope of societal transition needed to meet climate policies. Controversies around onshore wind installations are on the doorsteps of communities themselves and call attention to the difficult social aspects of transition that require a much broader public debate and policy response. We conclude that just transition should not be interpreted sectorally in competing energy futures but rather should infiltrate both the fossil and renewables sides of the Norwegian energy provision paradox.

The Positive Energy District (PED) concept is a localized city and district level response to the challenges of greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy transition. With the Strategic Energy Transition (SET) Plan aiming to establish 100 PEDs by 2025 in Europe, a number of PED projects are emerging in the EU member states. While the energy transition is mainly focusing on technical innovations, social innovation is crucial to guarantee the uptake and deployment of PEDs in the built environment. We set the spotlight on Norway, which, to date, has three PED projects encompassing 12 PED demo sites in planning and early implementation stages, from which we extract approaches for social innovations and discuss how these learnings can contribute to further PED planning and implementation. We describe the respective approaches and learnings for social innovation of the three PED projects, ZEN, +CityxChange and syn.ikia, in a multiple case study approach. Through the comparison of these projects, we start to identify social innovation approaches with different scopes regarding citizen involvement, stakeholder interaction and capacity building. These insights are also expected to contribute to further planning and design of PED projects within local and regional networks (PEDs in Nordic countries) and contribute to international PED concept development.

Cohesion Policy has provided new impulses for development in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) that continue to be challenged by regional disparities. This paper investigates the effects of the European Union Cohesion Policy on regional development. After presenting historical development patterns of the investigated area and opportunities afforded by this policy, its effects on a variety of indicators are analysed for the period 2007–2014. The analysis allowed confirming positive effects of EU Cohesion Policy on the development of CEE regions. However, these effects differ across the investigated area. Moving forward, it will be crucial to develop institutions and policies characteristic to each region that are stable and efficient without external funds.

The issue of decentralization in the postsocialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has faded from the research agenda since the democratic transition and EU accession. Conventionally presented as a global policy goal for supporting local democracy, improved governance and reduced regional inequalities, decentralization has been met with uncertain results in less developed regions. EU Regional Policy, initially supporting decentralization and related regionalization processes in CEE, has met challenges in lagging regions facing institutional legacies and capacity limitations. Perceived failures of decentralization point to a trend of re-centralization of regional policy in CEE countries, on the part of both national and EU levels, potentially exacerbating the trend of increasing regional polarization within countries. The cases of Estonia and Hungary illustrate these tendencies, drawing attention to national responses and the need for a continued dialogue on institutional development and EU Regional Policy reform in order to better target regional inequalities.

In the arena of EU regional development, Cohesion Policy and Innovation Policy are converging into a common economic strategy. Nevertheless, a scholarly debate surrounding the theoretical incompatibilities between the two is especially relevant to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where the majority of regions are beneficiaries of Cohesion Policy while attempting to implement innovation strategies. Based on a multi-national comparative analysis of policy documents and expert interviews from Czechia, Estonia, Hungary and Slovakia, this chapter assesses how the policy areas are interrelated, asking whether they should be seen as furthering regional polarisation instead of territorial cohesion. Acknowledging differences in national responses, it is necessary to further articulate, and possibly separate, the objectives of the respective policies, in order to protect the integrity of cohesion initiatives.