Policy mixes towards sustainability transition in the Italian biofuel sector: Dealing with alternative crisis scenarios

In this paper, we present an empirical analysis in order to identify and recommend the most effective policy combinations to steer a sustainable energy transition under alternative crisis scenarios (i.e. crisis worsening vs. crisis reduction). Specifically, focussing on a green energy niche – namely the Italian biofuel sector – we perform a fuzzy inference simulation by means of a two-step investigation. Firstly, we identified the concepts surrounding the investigated sector by means of a specifically designed questionnaire and the related literature. Secondly, we interviewed a pool of experts to map the casual effect relationships among the concepts. Then we used this map to develop the two alternative scenarios and the related most suitable policy mixes to foster the sector development. As expected, our findings show that the most effective policy mixes vary across the scenarios and according to different pursued objectives. This is particularly evident in the case of the job creation’ goal, when the policy mix in the crisis-worsening scenario differs considerably, both in terms of ranking and composition, from the policy mix in the crisis-reduction scenario. Therefore, our evidence supports the need for going beyond a simple one-fits-all approach to deploy the synergistic effect of the policy drivers’ interaction.