Private sector initiation of successful local partnerships for the green transition?

Halfway to the 2030-deadline, it seems clear that the world has a long way to go to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Fortunately, the SDGs come with a recipe as Goal 17 urges us to form collaborative networks and partnerships that can spur the development of innovative solutions. Since local green partnerships do not emerge spontaneously, the key question is who initiates and forms green innovation partnerships and how are they supported by structural, institutional, and project-related governance factors. New survey results based on a large sample of cases from all parts of the world show that, contrary to the expectations found in extant literature, the initiators of local co-creation of green solutions are often private actors such as NGOs or even private firms. Based on this surprise finding, this article studies an extreme case of private sector initiation of a green partnership in a Danish municipality where a newly established private company has managed to bring together a broad range of public and private actors and build a path-breaking plant for combined biogas production and pyrolysis that not only helps crowding out fossil fuels but also transforms biomass into biochar that is so clean that it can be tilled down in agricultural soil. The study of the initiation and formation of the Skyclean partnership is complemented by an analysis of the most important governance factors that have supported the collaborative innovation process and paved the way for its success. The study draws on state-of-the-art co-creation literature and mix methods for data collection. It contributes to understanding how private actors may spearhead local co-creation of green solutions with a potential global impact given that the right constellation of supporting governance factors is in place. As such, the study opens a new avenue for studying the governance of local co-creation of the green transition that the future of humankind depends upon.