- Forthcoming papers

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

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.

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.

This article presents the definition of personalized and targeted prevention and care protocols based on science, non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs), proposed by an international multidisciplinary scientific society, the Non-Pharmacological Intervention Society. It defines the scope of these health practices based on a standardized ethical and scientific evaluation framework developed over two years with more than 1000 people. Since 2024, this framework has enabled the creation of a universal heritage of intangible prevention and care protocols in a digital library, the NPIS Registry.

Mindfulness as a non-pharmacological intervention complements conventional medicine in the field of integrative health, as it is both a treatment protocol and a prevention protocol. It allows us to look at the person as a whole and no longer just as a patient suffering only from their disease. Many healthcare facilities are now using it in supportive care, chronic illness and pain, and because of its impact on the efficiency of organizations and the importance placed on care. In recent years, mindfulness has also been integrated into training courses for leadership development in organizations. Its use in the healthcare sector is therefore an important topic, and this article describes the expected impact of these measures.

Malaysia has a wide variety of traditional medicines stemming from its rich ethnic heritage, which have gradually been joined by more or less globalized complementary medicines. The practice of these medicines, which largely consist of manual therapies, is important to investigate their function as substitutes for drug interventions. This article addresses this issue by showing that the therapeutic model proposed by the Malaysian Holistic and Herbal Organization is based on a subtle combination of non-drug practices from T&C medicine, taking into account the various aspects of the disease and the patient, and promoting demedicalization. Conversely, the integrative model developed by the government, which is too reductive in its form, can only partially compensate for the strong medicalization inherent in biomedicine.

The action of “taking care” is one of the oldest gestures made towards others. Beyond health and well-being, it is appropriate to broaden the scope of these practices to the various dimensions of care with the very idea of understanding, in its unities and diversities, a variation of situations passing from acts the most. Punctual to the broadest ethical, political and prospective issues. Thus the implementation of non-medication care strategies allows us to question and wonder how the knowledge and practices of “taking care” can be re-examined in a multicultural world. To do this, it is a question of studying the conditions for applying these strategies so that they become key skills for a more sustainable and united world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two decarbonation specialists were interviewed in February 2024 to find out their analysis of current and future technical and industrial transformations in decarbonisation. What is the strategy of France’s major industrial groups in this area? Are current technologies reliable? Decarbonisation implies the electrification of industrial processes. But how can we produce “green” electricity, since to produce energy, we need energy? What technologies are currently in use and what are the future prospects? Is it possible to decarbonize industry, without calling into question the industrial model that has been gradually built up since the Industrial Revolution?

Our study focuses on the parliamentary debates on the » climate and resilience » bill, which intends to reduce the carbon footprint. It aims to describe and analyse the various symbolic devices, the ideological references mobilised by parliamentarians, and the arguments developped in relation to the government’s for decarbonisation 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, décentralisation and the acceptability of measures. The political far right is developping a nationalist conception of ecology based on ancestral localism. On the political left, we find a conception of ecology centred on the idea of social justice, although with variable geometry. Behind the unaminity in the face of the climate emergency, there are in fact significant differences in the conceptions of decarbonisation of the different parliamentary groups.

Depuis plusieurs décennies, la croissance exponentielle de l’utilisation du carbone fossile a entraîné des perturbations climatiques considérables. Pour atténuer le changement climatique, toutes les utilisations de carbone fossile vierge doivent être supprimées de toute urgence. De nombreux moyens de transport et processus industriels peuvent facilement être électrifiés et devraient l’être dans la mesure du possible. Mais certains secteurs comme la chimie, les matériaux (par exemple la chaux et l’acier), l’aviation et le transport maritime continueront à utiliser du carbone et le carbone fossile vierge utilisé aujourd’hui devra être remplacé pour atteindre les objectifs de neutralité climatique. L’utilisation du CO2 pour remplacer le carbone fossile dans les secteurs qui auront encore besoin d’hydrocarbures est une solution clé pour "défossiliser" notre économie. Le concept de captage et d’utilisation du carbone (CCU) est un terme général qui couvre les processus de captage du CO2 dans les fumées et les gaz de traitement ou directement dans l’air et sa conversion en divers produits tels que des combustibles, des produits chimiques et des matériaux. Il n’existe à ce jour aucune estimation globale précise du rôle potentiel d’atténuation des technologies CCU, en raison des incertitudes liées aux scénarios de coûts de l’électricité renouvelable et de la faible granularité des modèles qui simulent les différentes options CCU. Cependant, les technologies CCU peuvent jouer un rôle important dans l’atténuation du changement climatique, comme le décrit le dernier rapport du groupe de travail 3 du Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat (GIEC).

This article deals with the decarbonization of the economy through a personal account of the trajectory followed by the Steel sector, which went through 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 be also be addressed, as well as more social and political issues such as migrations and inequalities. Last, one suggests 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.

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.

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series is a futuristic projection of new technologies whose primary objective is to improve our daily lives. The series examines artificial intelligence, digitalisation, gamification and robotisation of our daily lives, augmented reality and virtual reality. The mirror held up by Charlie Brooker is sometimes blackened, sometimes true to our reality. The series reflects the utopian intentions of the technologies implemented and shows to what extent human use reminds us of the dangers and highlights the dystopian side of all these new technologies when man appropriates or distorts them to serve his own interests. These works of anticipation, by hybridising the fictional and the real, reveal both the dystopian and the mirror aspects, allowing the viewer to engage in both a reflective and self-reflexive process.