In this article I outline two divergent visions of a post-carbon future which I label 'climate capitalism' and 'ecological democracy.' These models are necessarily simplified and incomplete, serving as rough ideal types that can help us make sense of policy choices with regard to climate change as decisions laying the foundations of our future societal development. Decisions taken now direct us along one path, often making other directions more obscure, inaccessible, or unthinkable.

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Innovation is the central element of climate change policy in many jurisdictions. Reduced to technology development and linked to market‐driven priorities, innovation accommodates the interests of large emitters in the energy sector and underpins a sustainable development discourse that denies ecological limits to economic growth. This study examines the use of innovation as a key component of climate change policy in the case of Alberta's Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation, utilizing a political economy approach to explain the drivers of government funding priorities. An analysis of this technology fund's investments over nine years, under two different governments, revealed that nearly half of the revenue has been used to subsidize R&D in the fossil fuels industry in the name of clean energy development, and that this priority has continued despite recent government commitments under the Paris CoP agreement. The carbon levy system that generates revenue for the fund has been unsuccessful in incentivizing facility reductions, pointing to the need for more stringent regulation. Innovation as a framework for transition to a post‐carbon economy is severely limited by its exclusion of the roles of social knowledge and citizen participation in envisaging and designing paths for change.

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