With the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda, countries are committed to undertaking profound transformative processes to address the environmental crisis (United Nations, 2015). Some scholars argue that these agreements demand major institutional innovations and governance frameworks to enable public authorities to design transitioning processes (Mazzucato, 2018). However, as Braams et al. (2021) note, there is no specific role or blueprint for how authorities should deliver on sociotechnical transitions in existing administrative traditions. Another complication is that countries alone cannot achieve ambitious climate goals; they require global coordination (United Nations, 2015).
At the UN COP21, in 2015, which led to the Paris Agreement, the global ‘Mission Innovation’ (MI) initiative was announced as a strategic alliance to meet the SDGs, including the pledge to double public funding with $32 billion per year in a five year period for energy research and development (Sánchez & Sivaram, 2017). Later, in 2021, Mission Innovation 2.0 was launched, pulling 23 countries and the European Commission (EC) together to collaborate around key areas that require particular action and RDI to accelerate progress in a targeted mission-based approach. Among other coordinating roles, the EC is responsible for co-leading the Clean Hydrogen and the Urban Transitions Missions and supporting the implementation of the other missions, seven in total (European Commission, 2022a).
Furthermore, the EC stands out as a key promoter of transformative innovation policies within the bloc through its research and innovation programme – Horizon Europe – with a substantial budget of €100 billion (Hekkert et al., 2020). Applying Mazzucato’s approach (2016), the EC introduces ‘missions’ specifically for tackling societal challenges which are deemed urgent, including adaptation to climate change, climate-neutral and smart cities, soil health and food systems, healthy oceans and waters and cancer.
However, directionality is also steered via more broad strategic framework policies such as the European Green Deal (EGD), Cohesion Policy, and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (Pontikakis et al., 2022). Implicitly, the New European Innovation Agenda (NEIA) brings the approach to life in other ways, such as the Regional Innovation Valleys (RIVs) initiative. In the case of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, the EC has a dual role in co-leading the implementation of the Clean Hydrogen Mission globally and supporting the establishment of Hydrogen Valleys (H2V) within the EU.
According to Pontikakis et al. (2022), the EGD represents “Europe’s Moonshot mission of the 21st Century” (p. 15). The problem's crux is that its implementation raises complex multi-level governance challenges. As challenges and possibilities vary significantly across territories, Pontikakis et al. (2022) argue that the success of MOIPs relies on a ‘widespread bottom-up engagement and mobilisation’ (p. 16). To this end, some scholars argue that close links are needed between missions and the Cohesion Policy (e.g., Cappellano et al., 2023). Cappellano et al. (2023) note that MOIPs can benefit from Cohesion Policy’s adaptability to regional contexts and as a tool for redistribution. More specifically, Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) provide “a unique combination of both top-down macro-level directionality and widespread bottom-up micro-level and enterprise-led engagement” (Pontikakis et al., 2022).