TIPPING⁺ proposes a step-wise advance in the empirical characterisation, identification and assessment of the critical concept of Social-Ecological Tipping Points (SETPs) to help understand the underlying social processes and socio-structural changes which determine the adoption of alternative low-carbon, clean-energy development trajectories in CCIRs

TIPPING⁺ will provide theoretical and empirical analyses of the following cross-cutting dimensions, deemed to be relevant for characterising and explaining the occurrence of SETPs related to energy transitions at the regional level:

• changes in demographic structures and in patterns of geographical distribution, namely related to gender, migration, and youth
• cultural, community and psychological factors
• public policy and governance factors, and
• economic trends, including jobs creation/destruction, distributional changes in welfare and variations in stocks and flows of regional natural resources and energy. 

The project's main focus is the exploration of the conditions and potential interventions supporting the emergence of positive tipping points towards low-carbon, clean-energy transitions in a total of 20 selected European CCIRs case studies – and complemented with the insights from other international partners and cases.

TIPPING⁺ proposes that the achievement of desired futures and deliberate transformations in social-ecological systems depend on three main components:

• the social construction of collective visions and narratives, which frame and make sense of the actions that need to be taken by a given constituency of action
• the types of endogenous capacities generated to achieve those visions, and
• the different solutions or coping or innovation strategies which derive from such capacities ultimately oriented to achieve the original vision.

A positive tipping point is achieved whenever necessary and sufficient capacities have been built to implement the kinds of solutions/actions to achieve a transformative vision of the system, so that new desired systems’ conditions are created.

TIPPING⁺ will develop innovative empirical guidelines to understand key tipping points dynamics in energy transitions together with an integrated analytical framework carried out using a participatory methodology.