Vol 10 - Issue 1

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

At the start of the 21st century, global warming is a topic of paramount importance in economic, social, political, and, inevitably, ecological terms. Reducing CO2 emissions, or decarbonization, is the goal for the next 20 to 30 years, via carbon neutrality. There are two main options for achieving this goal. The first involves a technical escape, focusing on technical innovation. The second, on the contrary, emphasizes exclusively energy efficiency and the redefinition of social needs by supporting a new socioeconomic model.

This article presents, with an explicit angle on decarbonization, the research that we carried out in the book: Ecological Transition and Technological Change, ISTE Volume 42, London 2024.The article highlights and describes three main decarbonization paths, corresponding to three ecological transition issues: decarbonization as mitigation through capture and storage of emitted C02 with an unchanged technical and economic system; decarbonization as a solution to the ecological transition matter, centered on technological mutation, introducing decarbonized technologies as a replacement of fossil-fuel-based technologies, mainly combustion technologies. Finally, in view of the difficulty of achieving a satisfactory level of decarbonization, a third ecological transition issue is taking shape, namely the reorganization of our production, consumption and transport patterns, based essentially on sobriety and a reduction in the level of activity. The importance of the challenge means that these three decarbonization systems will continue to work in synergy.

Deux spécialistes de la décarbonation ont été interrogés en février 2024 afin de connaitre leur analyse des transformations techniques et industrielles actuelles et à venir de la décarbonation. Quelle est la stratégie des grands groupes industriels français en la matière ? Les technologies développées à l’heure actuelle sont-elles fiables ? La décarbonation suppose l’électrification des procédés industriels. Mais, comment produire de l’électricité « verte », puisque pour produire de l’énergie, il faut de l’énergie. Quelles sont les technologies utilisées actuellement et en devenir ? Peut-on décarboner l’industrie, sans remettre en question le modèle industriel qui s’est progressivement construit depuis la révolution industrielle ?

Long considered as “playing the Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, geoengineering, which refers to a wide range of large-scale technical interventions on the climate system, has gradually gained credibility over the past few years and is now being seriously considered in international climate debates. In this paper, we aim to analyze this process of normalizing geoengineering within international discussion arenas. This process stems from the integration of a compensation logic through the classical lens of decarbonization: climate agreements now distinguish between the optional reduction of emissions that can be ’mitigated,’ that is, captured through carbon capture techniques, and the mandatory reduction of emissions that cannot be mitigated. This compensation logic has the dual effect of normalizing CC(U)S and carbon geoengineering, while rendering some decarbonization measures optional. The question we will address in this paper is to what extent all of this points to a new horizon: the normalization of the prospect of overshooting the threshold set by the Paris Agreement, and also the normalization of solar geoengineering, understood as a means of thermally compensating for the failure or, at the very least, the postponement of decarbonization measures. The aim, in essence, will be to study the shift from an economy of promise to one of debt.

For several decades, exponential growth in the use of fossil carbon has created drastic climate disturbances. To mitigate climate change, all uses of virgin fossil carbon must, urgently, be phased out. Many transport sources and industrial processes can easily be electrified and should be where possible. But some sectors like chemical, materials (e.g. lime and steel), aviation and maritime transport will continue to use carbon and the virgin fossil used today will need to be substituted to meet climate neutrality targets. Using CO2 to replace fossil carbon in sectors that will still need hydrocarbons is a key solution to “defossilise” our economy. The concept of Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) is a broad term that covers processes that capture CO2 from flue and process gases or directly from the air and convert it into a variety of products such as fuels, chemicals, and materials. No precise global estimate of the potential mitigation role of CCU technologies exists to date, because of uncertainties in renewable electricity cost scenarios and the low granularity of models that simulate different CCU options. However, CCU technologies have the potential to play a significant role in the mitigation of climate change as described in the latest report from Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This article deals with the decarbonization of the economy through a personal account of the trajectory followed by the steel sector. It experienced several crises followed by periods of intense creativity, and is now moving into industrial implementation, even if Net-Zero will not be achieved until 2050, supposing the process does not run into too many obstacles. One also questions the relative roles of large organizations versus that of individuals: but both are deeply entangled. Moreover, in parallel to decarbonization, biodiversity loss and air pollution should also be addressed, as well as more social and political issues such as migrations and inequalities. Lastly, there is a suggestion to take on board the agency of all living creatures and of inanimate objects in order to deal with these issues in all their complexity.

Commissioned during the post-war reconstruction period, Emile Huchet was one of France’s main coal-fired power plants and underwent continuous modernization until the 1990s. At the end of Moselle’s coal mining operations (2004), the site entered a new phase marked by the privatization, deterritorialization, and diversification (into gas) of its activity, before being impacted by the acceleration of the energy transition and the announcement of the closure of the country’s last coal-fired power plants (2017). Since then, a public support scheme has been introduced to assist affected workers and foster the emergence of new substitute industrial activities, all sharing the common goal of reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions. This strategy of “decarbonized reindustrialization” thus positions the decarbonization of Emile Huchet as a lever for the site’s industrial (re)conversion and for the broader redevelopment of the Lorraine coal basin. Studying the trajectory of the Emile Huchet plant therefore provides a valuable opportunity to place this new decarbonization-driven recovery cycle within the longer historical reconfiguration of tructural
redevelopment dynamics in post-mining and post-industrial territories and, thus, to identify the nature of the current obstacles to the implementation of these associated objectives of industrial decarbonization and (re)conversion.

This paper will address the issue of the Decarbonized Industrial Process (DIP) by adopting a systemic technological style. The DIP will be considered as an artificial system interacting with the earth’s natural, social system and technical systems. Designing the DIP involves engineering it as a system and implementing the rules of Sustainable Systems Engineering (SSE). SSE provides concepts, methods and modeling techniques for clarifying the context, the requirements and the architecture of the DIP of interest, and framing the embodiment design of new solutions. An illustration will be given in the case of a highly carbon dioxide-producing process, namely clinkerization. However, our proposal is subject to significant limitations. We do not yet have any feedback on the concrete implementation of DIPs, and SSE remains an engineer-centric framework that cannot include key contributions from the natural sciences and the social sciences.