Vol 10 - Issue 4

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

This article presents the LOTUS tool, developed by the RASSCAS laboratory at ISEN Méditerranée, for assessing the social and environmental impacts of technological projects. LOTUS is a 3-hour workshop aimed at devising solutions to reduce these impacts. The tool is based on the work of Kate Raworth and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Trials have shown that LOTUS has exceeded its initial objectives, making projects more acceptable and taking into account planetary limits and social needs. The tool is versatile and adaptable to different types of project. The results underline the importance of taking social and environmental impacts into account in technology projects. LOTUS represents a significant advance in the responsible and sustainable design of technologies, and opens up future development prospects for more regenerative design.

The issue of decarbonization officially entered political debates in the early 2000s. but science and technology do not evolve according to the same chronology. The issue of anthropogenic climate change was identified by scientists as early as the 19th century, when industrialization based on fossil energy began. The 20th century was marked both by the continuation of this trajectory in terms of industrialization based on technologies powered by fossil energy, and by the creation of international institutions (such as the COP, the IPCC) to limit CO2 emissions. To limit climate change and its economic, social and human consequences, the watchword is “decarbonization”, i.e. reducing carbon emissions. But the reality is far more complex.

Our study focuses on the French parliamentary debates on the “climate and resilience” bill, which intends to reduce the carbon footprint. It aims to describe and analyze the various symbolic devices, the ideological references mobilized by parliamentarians, and the arguments developed in relation to the government’s desire for decarbonization in the context of this bill, by focusing our study on the general discussion. The political right and the government majority structure their discourse around liberal thinking based on economic efficiency, decentralization and the acceptability of measures. The political far right is developing a nationalist conception of ecology based on ancestral localism. On the political left, we find a conception of ecology centered on the idea of social justice, although with variable geometry. Behind the unaminism in the face of the climate emergency, there are in fact significant differences in the conceptions of decarbonization of the different parliamentary groups.

The steel industry is one of the most polluting in the world. In France, ArcelorMittal Dunkerque is the major industrial unit in terms of CO2 emissions, and as such benefits from substantial public support. In 2022, the company has announced an important decarbonization program to manufacture green steel using various technologies (direct reduction unit, electric furnace, etc.). Between July 2023 and September 2024, we interviewed managers in charge of the decarbonization program and union representatives to find out their respective positions on this issue and analyze the role of trade unions and workers in these technological transformations. What emerged was a certain convergence of views between the two parties on this issue. However, the union organization considers that the place of workers is underestimated, that the investment decision is behind schedule and that the plant’s survival is at stake.

The transition to a low-carbon economy is one of the major challenges ahead for trade unions. This raises the question of identifying and analysing the different strategies of European trade unions with regard to decarbonisation, especially in the manufacturing and energy sectors. Based on interviews and document analyses, our research indicates that unions adopt three types of strategies towards decarbonisation in the investigated industries: (1) opposition to decarbonisation policies, (2) hedging strategies seeking to minimize and/or delay regulation or (3) proactive support for decarbonisation policies. These union strategies are mainly rooted in sectoral economic interests mediated by unions’ ideological identities and understandings of union democracy.

Considering temporal data in reducing anthropogenic gas emissions into the atmosphere amplifies the un-predictable risks of climate change. Fossil fuel combustion emits various gases such as CO2, and SO2, which have con-trasting climate impacts and atmospheric lifespans- over a century for CO2 and less than two weeks for SO2. The defossi-lization of energy’s transition, away from fossil fuels, may accelerate global warming risks due to the loss of SO2’s cooling effect. A strategic focus on rapidly mitigating anthropogenic methane (CH₄) emissions aligns with a diversified decarboni-zation paradigm and offers a feasible pathway. Achieving this requires a nexus of technological, institutional, and societal innovations that depend on public engagement. The integration of technical democracy, via hybrid forums, and participa-tory action research combining field-based and controlled environments, could provide the institutional framework needed to navigate these complex transitions effectively.

Decarbonisation and the circular economy are generally considered as solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. In fact, it’s not quite that simple. Circular economy, doesn’t necessarily reduce waste production; instead, it can actually increase it, as these collected goods are treated as resources. That said, circular economy is essential (under certain conditions) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and particularly in the context of decarbonisation. Renewable energies like solar and wind require the extraction of mineral resources, and exploiting new mines generates greenhouse gas emissions. To break this vicious circle, we need to review our production and consumption model.

Published oil and gas reserves are sufficient to saturate the carbon budget published by the IPCC. Our prospects seem to be: either of a failing to stop the extraction of carbon products in time to avoid climate disaster, or of incurring economic losses with hardly predictable consequences due to the considerable stranding of carbon assets, brought about by constraining but existential regulations. To face this situation, this article proposes to put in place as quickly as possible an accounting procedure within companies supplying the carbon energy chain. It consists of a provision providing for the replacement of assets dedicated to carbon energy. Funded from its implementation, it will ensure the decarbonization of investment decisions upstream. Within the annual accounts of industries producing oil, gas and coal, the need to replace assets associated with energies dependent on carbon of fossil origin will thus be recorded at its heart. Inviting the timely provision of the capital necessary to avoid stranding, the provision will be calculated according to an energy-fair book value of the assets thus intended to be replaced… on time. In a context where clean energy technologies are hungry for financing, where the emissions quota system clearly gives insufficient signals to investors, but where investment precedents are nevertheless inspiring, we address key success factors involved by our procedure, including its effectiveness in conversion capacity, filling - on time? - the need for clean energy, and its attractiveness for investors. It will be necessary to draw the road map with the participation of international legal and financial governance, the list of which we justify.

This article aims to explore decarbonization as a catalyst for industrial transformation, considering the tensions between the need to reindustrialize territories and taking into account environmental issues. Through the example of the reconversion of Renault Flins into a circular economy factory in the Yvelines department, it highlights the challenges and opportunities linked to this change, while emphasizing the importance of understanding the complex mechanisms that govern interactions in this new ecosystem.

This article questions decarbonization as a vector of systemic transformations through the prism of the cluster concept. It examines the interactions between technological innovations and new resources around the ETI, but also between social innovations, environmental issues and a new territorial project, in a context linking reindustrialization with climate objectives. Through the industrial-port complex of Fos-Etang de Berre, within the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, decarbonization of existing industries and new low-carbon sites reveal the challenges of a collective structuring bringing the industrial world, public actors and civil society in a dynamic of multiple transitions.