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The urgency of a sustainability transition in the energy sector has led numerous authors to argue that it can and should be accelerated through active phase-out, disruption and destabilization of the undesirable established technologies. This paper starts out accepting the phase-out premise, but argues that a more nuanced view of ‘established’ technologies and incumbents is needed. Technologies often involve many different sectors, and there may be a great but underappreciated potential to realize transitions through recombinations and diversification by upstream firms providing the components and material inputs for the undesirable technology. Recombination and diversification can also dampen the possible negative effects of transitions such as loss of jobs and bankruptcy of firms that are not at the core of these technologies. By combining literature on transitions and phase-out, technological innovation …