This article examines how civil society initiatives are driving ethical innovation to address climate challenges amid stalled progress towards the Paris Agreement targets. Drawing on case studies from renewable energy education and deployment, the research demonstrates how civil economy approaches offer transformative alternatives to mainstream business models that continue to prioritize profit over planetary boundaries. Whilst acknowledging that conventional approaches have yielded some regional successes—particularly in areas with strong regulatory frameworks—civil society, operating as a powerful economic force with substantial contributions to GDP, employment and innovation, rather than as a passive ‘third sector’, must now realize its considerable potential to facilitate the transition away from fossil fuels. Civil initiatives can help drive change through collaborative structures, polycentric governance and ethical–financial balance, mobilizing underutilized resources. The emergence of community- supported production systems, commons-based peer production and hybrid value creation exemplifies the potential of a civil economy in catalysing planet-positive efforts: viable alternatives that operate within ecological limits while enhancing human well-being. Networking among civil self-organizing initiatives can help address challenges such as scaling, promoting equity, and improving policy alignment. Through systematic case comparison and analysis across diverse geographical and organizational contexts, this study identifies five concrete bridging models that connect grassroots initiatives with institutional frameworks. Cooperation with academia through transdisciplinary research—employing methods such as participatory action research—can provide the expertise required to address multiple challenges that civil society must navigate, including governance inefficiencies and the risk of co- optation by market actors. Despite these limitations, civil initiatives demonstrate considerable potential to facilitate the partial institutional transformation of business, enabling it to operate within planetary boundaries and to contribute to the richness of life on Earth.
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