Full steam astern? Sustainable retro-innovation in the maritime shipping sector

In light of the climate crisis and current challenges associated with decarbonizing the maritime shipping industry, some actors turn their attention backwards in time and promote the reemergence of sail cargo ships. A shift towards sustainable shipping could therefore be approached as a matter of revival through retro-innovation, i.e. social or technical solutions that combine elements and practices from the past and the present in ways that purposefully revive historic practices and technologies. Responding to calls to go beyond the techno-optimism in previous sustainability transitions research, this paper offers insight into sustainable retro-innovation in a global infrastructure sector. Contributing to conceptual bridging between the retro-innovation and sustainability transitions literatures, the paper introduces a novel conceptualization of sustainable retro-innovations with a specific focus on retro-innovation tactics. Based on empirical exploration of nine sail cargo initiatives, the paper examines how actors employ specific tactics throughout four retro-innovation processes (reflexivity, reminiscence, revival, reconfiguration), and the implications of these tactics for the emergence of retro-innovative socio-technical configurations. The findings highlight how sail cargo initiatives combine tactics in two main retro-innovation strategies: ‘mainstream imitation’ and ‘radical opposition’, resulting in separate socio-technical configurations with different implications for sustainability transitions.