Complementary currencies have been researched from a variety of perspectives, including as tools to promote environmental sustainability. This paper argues that in fact there are multiple and overlapping ways in which currencies can be linked to more ecologically sustainable development pathways, but in most cases this potential has yet to be fulfilled.  It outlines a theoretical approach that treats civil society as a site of grassroots innovation from which alternative ‘systems of provision’ such as complementary currencies can potentially emerge. This approach explicitly seeks to explore complementary currencies as multiple forms of innovation. Adopting this perspective enables us to apply a range of theoretical approaches from different innovation related literatures that can help explain the scaling up, replication and translation of currency systems.