The International Scientific Committee, for its issue n. 15 | 2024, which will be published in June, promotes the topic Innovability®© (part III): Energy Transition.

When, in 1987, the Brundtland Report proposed the need for a new sustainable development for mankind, it was clear that the benchmark was teknè, that is, mankind’s ability to process elements on the planet that could have become resources, but that were still unknown or not usable with the technologies of that time. Environment and Technology have always confronted and dialogued with each other, such that what we now call the (natural) environment is itself already the result of an enduring and profound anthropisation of the zoosphere, now a fragile anthroposphere. In our anthroposphere, caught in an unstable balance between research for artificiality and the will to protect the planet, the Covid-19 pandemic made it clear that the sustainable development project is a cryptic objective, the outlines of which we do not really know and within which we cannot operate only in conservative terms.

The term ‘innovability^©®’ is used in the field of economic and social sciences. It is considered a renewed driving force for a new development paradigm that expresses one of the most crucial current challenges and the need for a ‘supportive’ convergence between the two imperative demands of ‘innovation’ and ‘sustainability’, as if these were two opposing and conflicting entities. Aside from the term used, especially during a pandemic and its economic and social impact, mankind promotes its prerogative, using ‘things’ available in nature to make other things with a primary function different from its original one (innovation), aware that those resources are not inexhaustible (sustainability). In this always future-oriented context, we need to design our best policy and system actions to promote the need to innovate by using the Planet’s resources well and consciously.

‘Green and digital transitions are twin challenges’, stated Ursula von der Leyen, in her inaugural speech as President of the European Commission in 2019. In this sense, the European Green Deal, the Next Generation EU and the New European Bauhaus, together with other national Plans (for example, the PNRR in Italy) have strategic importance both in establishing, clearly and univocally, the paths of future development for an ecological, digital, cohesive and resilient Europe and in correcting the main imbalances of Europe, converging – despite the heterogeneity of the conditions of the Member States – expectations and requests, of a general nature, common and shared, of citizens and businesses. The ‘transition’ is a common thread that joins subjects and debates concerning science, technology and, at the same time, philosophy, anthropology, ecology and economy. These are described through many technical adjectives that define increasingly limited scopes, yet more open to cross-disciplinary logic, in a sort of speciation of disciplines and language, recalling names such as Bateson, Commoner, Catton and Dunlap, Carpo, Kelly, Solis, Negroponte, and again Jonas, Morin, Floridi, Caffo.

In this context, where digital anthropology is identified in the term ‘anticipation’, in the ability to interact with the uninterrupted flux of innovation to build a new digital ecosystem (Solis, 2016), the anthropocentric innovation finds its ideal collocation, expands and evolves, gaining the ability to put humans and their needs at the heart of new important proposals. The priority of this new form of ‘sustainable innovation’ is social and environmental well-being, joint and contemporary, to facilitate an ethical and sustainable transition for the benefit of the whole community (WEF, 2022). The anthropic transformation of space is an energy-intensive practice that increases the level of entropy, still a long way from systematic and widespread ‘cradle-to-cradle’ approaches or from being respectful of non-renewable resources. The subject does not concern disciplinary statutes but cross-disciplinary and cross-sectional aspects to orient and support a resilient, sustainable and inclusive ‘recovery’.

The complexity of the subject is one of the challenges of our century. On the one hand, the Global and Sustainability Initiative (GESI, 2021) shows how the ‘ecological transition’ can ethically direct the opportunities of the digital area, and The European Double Up (Accenture, 2021) argues that the ‘digital transition’ is a useful tool to initiate shared processes whose implementation would otherwise be slower, less pervasive and probably less performing. On the other hand, the union between ‘green’ and ‘blue’ shows many problems and contradictions (Floridi, 2020), to the point of speculating the impossibility of implementing the ‘ecological transition’ together with the ‘digital transition’ and ‘energy transition’ (Caffo, 2021). Therefore, for the new ‘innovability^©®’ paradigm – with its triple key of interpretation and explanation of the possible scientific research and operational approaches – to reach its peak and be effectively implemented, new (material and immaterial) tools should be introduced. These should be adequate, new, transversal, interscalar and cross-disciplinary but, at the same time, it appears essential to work to build and nurture a relationship of strategic complementarity between ecology, digital and energy, a three-way osmosis of approaches, progress, experiments and results within a vision of shared progress and common goals.

The goals for climate neutrality by 2050 and for a 55% reduction in CO₂ emissions (compared to 1990 levels) by 2030 (European Commission, 2019, 2021) pose a range of complex issues for the European Union, and even more so for the rest of the world, including a significant increase in ‘clean’ energy production from alternative and renewable sources, reduction of energy poverty, greater security of energy supplies and a drastic reduction in dependence on energy imports while aiming to foster modern economic growth decoupled from the use of non-renewable resources and job creation and to generate environmental and health benefits; these objectives come with inevitable cultural, political, economic, productive, technological and social implications, to be addressed both within national borders and in the foreign policy arena. Despite various EU and national legislative measures and substantial financial resources allocated, the three main axes of climate policies (reducing emissions and consumption, increasing energy efficiency, and increasing the share of renewables) do not seem to have had the desired virtuous effects.

Recent IPCC Reports (2022, 2023) expose the hard truth about the state of the climate and confirm the urgency for action, indicating that policies put in place from 2020 will lead to a global temperature increase of 3.2°C by the end of the century, and identifying 2025 as the upper limit at which to begin reducing global emissions. The same Reports indicate that the tools to reverse the current trend are already available, but at the same time stress the importance of acting systemically, employing transversal measures, including adaptation and mitigation measures, equally distributed in regions at risk, and with inclusive, transparent, and participatory decision-making processes: in this scenario, energy-related aspects play a strategic role. The energy transition will certainly be an expensive process; according to the World Energy Outlook 2021 (IEA, 2021), 4 trillion dollars per year are needed to hit the 2050 carbon neutrality target, a massive investment that needs to be managed in a reasoned and judicious manner, evaluating all possible options and avoiding the adoption of costly solutions of uncertain effectiveness. Meanwhile, in 2022 the U.S. Congress passed the three climate bills (Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act) that commit more than 500 billion dollars in tax credits, loan guarantees and other investments for the energy transition, while the European Union, with Repower EU and Fit for 55, promoted a 300-billion-euro Plan, of which 225 billion is in funding and grants and 75 billion in loans.

The energy transition is, therefore, complex and difficult to implement because it involves ‘everything’ and is needed ‘everywhere’, and also because, on a global scale, primary energy consumption has been steadily increasing for at least half a century (Ritchie and Roser, 2022). Every human activity requires energy and produces greenhouse gases, and while the United States and Europe represent virtuous geographies in the production of energy from renewable sources, 75% of the world’s population lives in emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India, and South Africa, which today are responsible for two-thirds of total greenhouse gas emissions, while China alone emits more than a quarter: hence the need to think globally instead of locally since climate change is not only a danger in itself but represents – in the words of Amitav Ghosh (2017) – a ‘threat multiplier’ that stresses and amplifies not only the instability and insecurity already present in some areas of the world but also the global economy: according to the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2021) the most catastrophic scenario, involving a temperature rise of up to 3.2 °C, could wipe out up to 18% of the world’s GDP as soon as mid-century. All of this, needless to say, at great cost in terms of human lives as well.

The present-day is marked by great uncertainty over the stability and validity of the technological, economic, production, energy, and infrastructure systems on which society depends in everyday practices (De Certeau, 2011) and in the dynamics of social production and reproduction (Lefebvre, 2016); because of this, researchers agree on the strategic role of research and the importance of experimentation and exchange of good practices in a ‘clean’ economy based on the efficient use of non-renewable resources and eco-innovation of processes, products, and design solutions (Höpfl et alii, 2022) to lower the production of CO₂ emissions. Such a goal can be achieved, in all spheres of the built environment, by overcoming the current limitation represented by the lack of coordinated action from an ‘enlightened direction’ that lacks a systemic vision and is not based on a methodological practice of a multi and interdisciplinary, non-scalar and intersectoral type, capable of simultaneously integrating knowledge, expertise, diverse disciplines and production sectors (sometimes seemingly unrelated) to rationalise and optimise, by combining traditional and innovative technologies, on the one hand, all aspects that come into play in the transformative intervention and its process, project and product dimensions, and, on the other hand, the input and output material flows for them to be ‘at least’ equivalent. In this regard, Terry Irwin’s studies (2018) represent a relevant contribution, proposing a Transition Design approach to address the critical ‘systemic’ issues of our century through five points: 1) visualising and mapping complex problems and their interconnections and interdependencies; 2) placing them within large spatiotemporal contexts; 3) identifying and overcoming stakeholder conflicts and leverage alignments; 4) facilitating stakeholders in co-creating visions of desirable futures; and 5) identifying leverage points in the large problem system in which to place design interventions.

Based on these reflections, AGATHÓN, in addressing the disciplinary areas of Design and in particular Landscape, Urban Planning, Architecture, Engineering, Architectural Technology, Design, Restoration and Recovery, and Representation, proposes the theme of Innovability ^©® (part III) | Energy Transition to foster an open discussion, through the collection of innovative and sustainable essays and critical reflections, research and experiments, projects and interventions (preferably interdisciplinary and interscalar in nature), that address topics including, but not limited to:

• energy landscapes;
• soft mobility infrastructures and services;
• tools and methods for mapping, cataloguing and dissemination of best practices aimed at the cost-effective containment and zeroing of energy consumption;
• transition design;
• integrated solutions for energy, ecological and digital transitions (green/smart cities, buildings, materials, objects, and services);
• solutions for energy sustainability with effects and benefits at different scales, from urban to indoor and vice versa;
• energy retrofit interventions as drivers of urban regeneration, for suburbs and ancient contexts and for historic, modern, and contemporary architecture;
• tools, methods, and languages of architectural design (overhangs, courtyards, porches, loggias, solar screens, flexibility of use and variability of functions, etc.) with formal, perceptual and symbolic values;
• Near Zero, Net Zero and Positive Energy development models;
• ‘ecological’ solutions for carbon subtraction and storage in urban districts;
• solar albedo mitigation strategies in the buildings-open spaces system;
• responsive/adaptive, passive bioclimatic, nature-based, and biophilic systems;
• innovative components and materials (phase change, energy, etc.) for the reduction of energy consumption;
• industry 5.0 and embedded and operational energy optimisation through circular approaches, open building, zero waste, recycling, upcycling, design for disassembly, reversible building design, life cycle design, design for longevity, etc;
• ‘circular ecosystems’ for zero-impact energy production from waste or refuse;
• renewable energy production and self-consumption, energy communities, positive energy districts, smart grids, off-grid solutions, microgrids, etc;
• integrated systems for energy production (photovoltaic, solar thermal, micro aeolian, etc.);
• zero-km production and consumption chains;
• support strategies, user-friendly tools, and services for the energy transition of companies and individuals;
• tools, technologies (ICT, IoT, cloud, GIS, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Digital Twin, BIM 7D, etc.), sensors and big data for the evaluation, optimisation, management, and monitoring of energy flows;
• …..

Note: INNOVABILITY®© is a registered trademark of ENEL S.p.A. – All rights reserved to Enel S.p.A.