Business roles in 1.5 °C transitions: a stakeholder-informed scenario analysis

Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires profound transformations of production and consumption systems, yet the role of businesses in enabling such transitions remains insufficiently addressed in scenario-based sustainability research. Existing scenarios often conceptualize firms as implementers of mitigation measures rather than governance actors shaped by policy, institutions, and societal expectations. This article addresses this gap by examining stakeholder assessments of business-related climate policies across alternative governance configurations for 1.5 °C-aligned futures. The study employs a three-stage methodology combining a literature review, a multi-country Policy Delphi, and a scenario analysis. The literature review identified conceptual gaps and informed the analytical framework. The Policy Delphi elicited expert assessments of the desirability, feasibility, barriers, and enabling conditions of business-related climate policies in Germany, Spain, Hungary, Latvia, and Sweden. We synthesize these insights into four exploratory governance scenarios structured along two dimensions: state intervention versus voluntarism, and local versus global governance. The results reveal substantial variation across governance configurations and national contexts. Stakeholders in the study widely perceived state-led and globally coordinated approaches as effective but politically and institutionally challenging, while more voluntary or decentralized approaches were seen as politically feasible but insufficient to achieve systemic change. Across scenarios, financial arrangements, institutional credibility, and policy coherence emerge as critical enablers of business engagement. Stakeholders consistently favor hybrid governance arrangements that combine regulation, market incentives, and participatory approaches. By integrating stakeholder-informed assessments of feasibility and desirability into scenario development, the article advances scenario-based transition research and provides a governance framework for evaluating business roles in 1.5 °C-aligned sustainability transitions.