The renewable energy transition has societal implications, including opportunities for citizen participation, equity and justice in workforce transitions, and reconciliation. Renewable energy clusters may be one of the drivers of a sustainability transition. Material renewable energy clusters combine multiple renewable energy production technologies (e.g., wind and solar) with distribution technologies that allow for flexibility in energy supply and demand balancing, such as storage, demand response, virtual power plants, and peer-to-peer sharing. Industrial renewable energy industrial clusters include the formal and informal networks within the geographical concentration of manufacturers of the renewable energy value chain. A range of definitions, terminologies and synonyms for renewable energy clusters are emerging, and, during a climate emergency with risk of disruptions to socioecological systems, understanding this range is important to anticipate how a renewable energy transition will occur.

While some of the elements of renewable energy clusters have been identified by other scholars, there are no typologies of renewable energy clusters. The process of typifying renewable energy clusters is crucial for understanding the rise and performance of renewable energy clusters by identifying the underlying factors that predict their emergence, replicating best practices, removing potential barriers, and formulating better socio-technical interventions. Typification has long been used in policymaking: from informing development policies to transferring know-how among ‘peers’ based on data-driven approaches.

To this end, the research presents an analytical framework to identify potential explanatory factors that can later be tested to predict and typify the emergence of renewable energy clusters in locations with different social, geographic, institutional, and economic characteristics, and to understand their implications for renewable energy transitions in local regions.

The factors that could influence the emergence of renewable energy clusters in various locations were identified based on the selected approaches from Technology Innovation System (TIS), Energy Geography, and Regional Sciences.  Actors, institutions, networks, knowledge and tools, proximity, locational characteristics, and path dependency are the seven initial dimensions through which renewable energy cluster typologies could emerge.