Enhancing Europe’s sustainability through innovation and technology

Abstract

Innovation plays a vital role in achieving sustainability goals, promoting a prosperous society and driving economic recovery. The EU needs disruptive innovation to meet its climate targets, decarbonise industries and ensure that citizens are not left behind. The technologies developed through innovation can enhance the EU’s competitiveness as well as creating jobs and GDP growth, and also hold significant potential for addressing climate challenges and supporting the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Some studies emphasise that both digital and energy technologies have a significant carbon footprint, given that, for example, the manufacture of computers, the transportation of power-generation technologies from place of manufacture to place of deployment, the raw materials used to build smartphones and the energy consumed by these devices all entail environmental impacts. But the picture is more complex than this. This article argues that the development of these technologies should be seen as a great opportunity to enhance Europe’s sustainability and the EU’s policies for the green transition and its goals. The European Green Deal has proposed an ambitious agenda for achieving climate neutrality in the EU by 2050. This will not happen without investing in several ‘clean’ and disruptive digital and energy technologies, or without promoting policies that provide an enabling environment for these innovations to emerge.