Considering prevalent trends, such as population growth, increasing demand for animal protein, land use change, and resource scarcity, a blueprint for future crops may help prioritise sustainable and efficient agriculture practices, as well as improved food systems. CropBooster-P, funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme, is a project that aimed to find a solution to this question by looking into innovative crop-breeding technologies for improving climate adaptability, resource use efficiency, yield, and quality. You are standing in front of four doors that lead you into different realities for the year 2050. The first one guides you into a world in which high-quality food is sustainably harvested through innovative solutions, providing large volumes of feedstock for a thriving bioeconomy. The second door opens to a scenario in which people drive the preferences and concerns for health and agriculture, determining what farmers can grow, and businesses must exercise the utmost transparency in food production practices. The third door leads you to a bleak setting, in which European countries are struggling to meet basic food demand and technology reigns supreme in order to mitigate this state of emergency. And finally, through the fourth door you see a society that is extremely food-technology averse, polarised, and distrustfuly of its politicians. Food choice is scarce, and prices have become disproportionate. Which door is most likely to swing open to a concrete reality? The answer could be a combination of two or more of these. It is widely recognized that food production systems are expected to face significant pressure in the coming decades due to trends such as climate change, population growth, and unsustainable land use practices. Therefore, what are the ways in which crop productivity can best be equipped to resist and overcome these factors, in other words be made “future-proof”? Coordinated by René Klein Lankhorst, Senior Scientist and Programme Developer at the Plant Sciences Group of Wageningen University and Research, CropBooster-P was finalised at the end of 2022 and the resulting roadmap for how to improve crop yields in Europe was presented to the European Commission after seven years in the making. This roadmap lays out the design for a large pan-European consortium that aims to execute the research agenda over a period of 10 to 15 years. The new phase thereafter aims to ensure that this roadmap will be followed up and executed with support of the European Commission. Cropbooster-P used a combination of scenario-building methods, stakeholder engagement, and scientific research into the current state-of-the-art in the field. These methods were used to develop a roadmap presenting the different scenarios above for future-proofing crop plants, as well as including a plan for developing and implementing the suggested research. “In these scenarios, we are using all kinds of current trends and making an extrapolation of what direction the future will take,” Klein Lankhorst notes. “These four extreme scenarios remain in the boundaries of what will be possible. Of course, the real future will look like something in between.” Envisioning these different realities can help determine what kinds of crop improvements are allowed or needed. The scenarios should be highly unlikely, but not impossible, and they should not overlap with each other, but rather account for a wide range of possibilities. One of the key components of the project was engaging stakeholders in the conversation. Initially, plant scientists were involved in the development of these four scenarios, as well as other industry leaders from the food and plant industry. The results were then presented to the wider community, such as farmers, the breeding industry, consumers, and other scientists, who refined their strategies and the scenarios. This was done in workshops, surveys and in citizen juries, particularly to obtain citizens’ opinions on new breeding technologies, a highly controversial topic. Citizens’ juries consisted of a cross-section of the population in terms of age, gender, education, and attitude levels towards the technology. Klein Lankhorst stresses that even when opinions initially differ on a subject, new viewpoints can always be formed. “At the beginning, the tendency was that people were against the use of new breeding technologies, but after two days of intense discussion, they were more prone to agreeing to their effectiveness under certain conditions, such as that they are safe, affordable, well-regulated, and only used in situations highly relevant to society at large.” The exercise showed that involving the broader society in complex, scientific questions by explaining the subject thoroughly, weighing the pros and cons, and leaving space for independent judgment, it is possible to come to well-informed opinions that may be different to initial preconceptions. With a view towards 2050, Klein Lankhorst wonders if we will manage to increase productivity to feed a global population and if we will do this without disrupting our natural ecosystem. In this sense, foresight can help to approach concerns and action points for ecosystem degradation early on, such as employing sustainable farming, selecting climate-adaptable crops, and increasing crop resource use efficiency. “It’s really important to identify these critical action points, what is important to do in the future, but also to try to find early indicators, to see whether we are heading into that kind of future.” However, there are challenges, including the divergent time scales between policymaking and the development of biological solutions. While politicians plan for short-term mandates, plant breeding technologies and cycles take at least 20 to 30 years to develop. “I tell politicians we have to start now to solve this problem by 2050. What they define as a problem is not one we can solve in a current mandate period.” Klein Lankhorst envisions a scenario that combines ecological farming with high-tech model farming in order to increase crop yields by 2050. Ecological farming makes use of methods that promote soil health while minimising the use of synthetic inputs such as pesticides and fertilisers, while high-tech model farming integrates cutting-edge technologies and data analytics to inform decision-making. Combining the two would leverage the power of technology to create more sustainable and efficient farming systems. However, Klein Lankhorst is concerned that policymakers think along either one or the other solution. ”I would really like for there to be a vision that could integrate things,” He hopes. “that these systems are not antagonists but can support each other and can be developed in synergy.” In this way, it could be possible to increase productivity on existing agricultural grounds without touching rainforests and biodiversity. “The lesson is that for anything that you propose, technologically or otherwise, it’s important to involve society and consider the pros and the cons and developing products that benefit consumers directly. I am for using all available technologies, but we need to involve all of society to explain why are doing this and why it is so important.” This is an article from the Horizon Futures Watch Newsletter (Issue I, May 2023) presented by Foresight on Demand

How important is the EU Framework Programme for Europe’s ability to respond effectively to potential future disruptions that could unfold from now to 2040? What are the implications of those disruptions for the directions of EU research & innovation in the period 2025-2027? These are the questions posed by the Research4Futures Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey, carried out between 6th – 18th of December 2022 by Institutul de Prospectiva, which engaged almost 950 contributors from Europe and beyond. The disruptions explored in the survey were drawn from recent foresight work performed by the Foresight on Demand consortium on behalf of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), namely two projects: Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe, and project S&T&I FOR 2050. Science, Technology and Innovation for Ecosystem Performance – Accelerating Sustainability Transitions. These projects delivered so-called foresight scenarios at the time horizon of 2040, but the scope, methodologies and final results were different. The case studies developed in the two projects are rather extensive texts, so for a better user experience in the Research4Futures survey, these contents were clustered and significantly condensed, resulting in eleven domains, each presented in a one-page text. In the survey, each domain page was structured under three sections: i) a brief description of the disruption(s) in the respective domain; where the disruptions encompass both crises and opportunities, hopes and fears; ii) a set of brief future scenarios that explore different ways the disruptions might unfold and their consequences, iii) a final section on implications for R&I, in light of the disruptions. The figure below showcases the way respondents assessed the importance of the EU Framework Programme for Europe’s ability to respond effectively to the potential future disruptions within each of the domains explored in the survey. Notably, respondents regard the EU Framework Programme as an important vector of the EU in addressing challenges and opportunities brought forth by future disruptions, casting an average score between 4 and 5 (on the scale from 1 to 5) with regards to all domains, with a minor exception. Second, contributors to the survey view the EU Framework Programme to be of utmost relevance and importance in connection to the future of Artificial intelligence; suggesting a significant role of research and innovation in improving AI applications and establishing ethical frameworks for AI developments, in shaping the nature of human–AI collaboration. The top R&I directions stemming from the survey are: AI improvements for specific applications The nature of AI and human intelligence AI in medical applications Understanding cooperation between humans and AGI systems Ethical standards, AI regulatory sandboxes To explore the full results of the Research4Futures survey we warmly invite you to consult the report below.

To be of relevance to energy, green hydrogen and related technologies need to be scaled up hugely. To reach such a mass market, a low-cost clean-hydrogen supply must be available. However, to lower the price of hydrogen, much larger H2-markets and volumes are needed. The scale and the cost (of green hydrogen) go hand in hand. But they also form a classical Chicken and Egg problem, which many now successful clean energy technologies have likewise faced in the past and managed to overcome. What can we learn from the past to accelerate green-hydrogen development? In simple terms, the technology and the hydrogen market must be addressed simultaneously. This can be achieved through a range of ‘technology push and market pull’ actions, for example, increasing research, development, and innovation efforts (RDI) to improve the technology base and reduce its costs. Or, providing financial support to investments of full-scale pilot plants and demonstrations which will increase the volume up-take of the technology and will lead to important learning-by-doing or learning-by-using endogenous learning effects that further reduce the cost of technology. Empirically, we know that for each doubling of the cumulative volume produced, the unit cost may drop by 15 per cent. Naturally, if the technology were still too immature such as in the case of fusion energy, technology-push would be preferred as it would not make sense to start massive industrial efforts yet. For solar photovoltaics (PV), the German feed-in-tariffs opened the market for PV and, together with the Chinese scale-up of industrial production of solar cells, helped photovoltaics to reach a global breakthrough leading to 90 per cent lower prices in just a decade. The same story repeats itself now with batteries and electric vehicles, where the decreasing cost of batteries has been even more fierce than with PV. Could such a development be possible for green hydrogen as well? Green hydrogen is still 2-4 times costlier than traditional fossil-fuel-based hydrogen and is not competitive to form a replacement. A target price of around €2/kgH2 could ensure competitiveness in many applications. However, that cost target is not that far off as a 50-60% drop from the present cost level of producing green-H2 would be required. From a historical perspective, compared to other successful clean energy technologies, it is now the right moment to gear up the efforts to commercialize and scaling-up green hydrogen. The transition is already passing the point where combining stronger push-and-pull measures are justified. Even shifting more towards the market-pull would be motivated as that would create the industrial base for the massive scale-up and economy-of-scale-driven price reduction required for green hydrogen to reach the energy-relevant level. The markets are now clearly starting to pull hydrogen into a larger scale, often helped by the support from national governments. A recent report by McKinsey (2022) shows that some 680 large-scale hydrogen projects have been announced globally, reaffirming the intent to make hydrogen viable for large-scale use (Fig. 1). These projects importantly span the whole supply-chain from production, transport, use to the infrastructure of hydrogen, which supports creating the necessary ecosystems for massive use of hydrogen. Europe has a lead in this development as almost half of the large-scale hydrogen projects are located here, and the EU shows the way forward in several areas, such as using green-hydrogen for steelmaking. The European Union hydrogen strategy, which explores renewable hydrogen to help cost-effectively decarbonize the EU, has played a pivotal role in this development by creating a concerted European action toward scale-up of production and infrastructure for hydrogen. If successful, the global push of emission-free hydrogen could help to cut even up to 20 per cent of the global CO2 emissions by 2050. Figure 1. Large-scale hydrogen projects globally. (Source: Bernd Heid, Alma Sator, Maurits Waardenburg, and Markus Wilthaner (2022). Five charts on hydrogen’s role in a net-zero future. McKinsey Sustainability) Though the market-pull signals for green-hydrogen are very encouraging, the technology-push will still be highly useful and even necessary to reduce the costs and in helping to ‘root’ and integrate hydrogen into energy systems. One key area in this context will be reducing the cost of green-hydrogen production through electrolysis, which is influenced the investment (capex) and the running costs (opex), in particular the price of electricity and efficiency of the H2 system. By 2030, the specific cost of both alkaline and PEM electrolysis could be halved to below €500 per kW through technological advancements, an increase in manufacturing volumes and scaling up to 100 MW-units (source: Cost forecast for low-temperature electrolysis – technology driven bottom-up prognosis for PEM and alkaline water electrolysis systems. Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, October 2021). Combining the above technological achievements within reach with better systems operation, in particular increasing the operation time of hydrogen production plants to at least 40% of full load hours and feeding electrolysis with cheap renewable electricity, could lead to a complete cost breakthrough of green-hydrogen, i.e., meeting the perhaps most crucial prerequisite for full scale-up. Integration of hydrogen production into the energy systems offers further benefits which should neither be overlooked. Production of H2 and its derivates (e.g., synthetic fuels) involves side-products such as heat and oxygen, which create value. For example, a full-scale power-to-gas plant using hydrogen to be built in Vantaa city close to Helsinki, Finland, will integrate a whole hydrogen system into the municipal energy system. The waste heat created will be utilised, thus increasing the hydrogen system's overall energy efficiency to 90 per cent. Technology-push-actions should also address important strategic future issues that could either accelerate or hamper green-hydrogen uptake and scale-up in the long term. Such questions include e.g., the availability of critical materials needed in hydrogen technologies, storage of hydrogen in large-scale, safe use of H2 in civic society, etc. Many of these technology-related questions have been under research and development for several decades. Still, these should now be addressed through adequate RDI resources and coordinated efforts to find satisfactory solutions yet to be developed. Bridging science to innovations will be of utmost importance to feed next-generation solutions and (more effective and cheaper) technologies necessary for the next steps in scaling up. Hydrogen has remained as a vision for half a century from the times of the oil-crises, when it was first identified as a potential mover-and-shaker technology in energy. Hydrogen has undergone many hypes in the past. But this time, turning the promise of green hydrogen into one of the solutions to the climate-energy nexus is closer to reality than ever because scaling matters here, and we now have a more credible pathway for scaling up green hydrogen.

There are an estimated billions of tonnes of strategic minerals such as nickel, cobalt and copper, lying on the ocean’s floor. Technological advance, financial viability, and regulatory frameworks are slowly aligning to permit deep-sea mining (DSM). While many rejoice in these developments, a variety of actors are calling for a moratorium on the nascent industry. Most notably, the European Commission released a Joint Communication stating that not enough knowledge about the risks of DSM is available and that more research is to be conducted to make DSM sustainable[i]. With deep-sea mining closer than ever to becoming a reality on the one hand, and calls for a moratorium on the other hand, it is important to discuss future directions of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for a flourishing deep-sea ecosystem. The way in which we view the world and how we conceptualise nature shape our attitude towards it and the type of STI to be desired and pursued. The project “S&T&I for 2050” provides a framework to imagine different sustainable futures depending on underlying values and human-nature relations. Three perspectives on ecosystem performance are described: “Protecting and restoring ecosystems”, concerned with preservation of ecosystems by managing the impact from human activities; “Co-shaping socio-ecological systems”, concerned with simultaneous development of social practices and ecological processes towards resilience and sustainability renewal; “Caring within hybrid collectives”, concerned with the establishment of caring relationships in new local collectives with humans and other entities on an equal footing. These three perspectives offer different views on notions of the deep sea and how and why we should promote its flourishing, and therefore delineate different views on deep-sea mining. The first perspective, i.e. protecting and restoring, views the deep sea as natural capital, a sphere that is separated from that of humans. The ecosystem is valued according to cost and benefit analysis (CBA), often based on ecosystem service. DSM would thus proceed when consistent with the findings of CBA and would need to limit as much as possible the effects on the environment. The second perspective, i.e. co-shaping, views the deep sea as a complex and unstable ecosystem that is co-shaped by both humans and non-human deep-sea entities. Ecosystems must flourish to allow for our long-term survival. Finding a governance system that is beneficial for all human and non-human entities part of the socio-ecological system is thus the proposed attitude towards assuring a healthy deep sea. The third perspective, i.e. immersing and caring, does not see a difference between humans and nature, thus also the deep sea. These two elements are one and the same, making humans deeply connected with a pluriverse of other beings. Caring for the deep sea and its health is not a choice, and deep-sea mining can only result from a negotiation between creatures to allow all to flourish on their own terms. Stemming from these perspectives on deep-sea performance, I sketched three 2050 scenarios on the future of deep-sea mining focused on ecosystem performance. P1 scenario: The masters of the deep sea Deep-sea mining is an established industry. A plethora of norms, tribunals and enforcement bodies assure that all contractors operating in national and international waters follow protocols and respect the boundaries and marine protected areas (MPAs). The deep sea has been carefully mapped via satellite imagery and all mineral deposits, before being approved for exploitation, have been studied in all their biological and chemical characteristics. Each operation in international water is to be approved behind closed doors by a board of experts selected by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), of which all countries are member. Meticulous risk assessments and environmental impact assessments are conducted to measure whether the extraction of minerals from a determined area makes economic sense against the loss of other ecosystem services. The “do no significant harm” principle (DNSH) is adopted as a default in deep-sea mining policymaking. The ISA also has the power to set caps to the quantity of minerals extracted each year depending on the indicators of stressors on the deep-sea ecosystem. It has happened in the past that restrictive caps resulted in fierce legal battles between investors and the ISA in a process alike that of the ISDS. Mining operations are required to adopt advanced technologies built on deep-sea robotics and AI to limit their impact in the extraction of minerals. When in 2032 a DSM operation caused a large-scale biodiversity loss that impacted numerous fisheries in the Pacific, controlling or eliminating the plumes of sediment became a priority of new technologies. Sensors are placed all throughout the deep sea to continuously monitor the temperature, the toxicity and water movements. P2 scenario: Embracing deep uncertainty Deep-sea mining has been practiced for 15 years now. The global moratorium put in place in 2025 allowed the international system to adapt and create a suitable regulatory framework to govern deep-sea mining effectively. Uncertainty in conducting mining operations in the deep sea was accepted and embedded in a highly responsive and adaptive governance structure. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was joined by a multitude of organisations, such as the Deep Ocean Protection Authority (DOPA), the DSM States Consortium, and Atlantic Fisheries Agency (AFA), in order to assure as much as possible a governance of a global common in the name of resilience of the ecosystem. The precautionary principle is a prerogative for all decisions regarding deep-sea mining activities so that long term flourishing is possible. Feedback loops in this structure have allowed prevention of significant strains on the deep-sea ecosystem and quick interdisciplinary response to rebalance the ecosystem. For this aim, data from indicator species and sensors placed not only in the deep-sea, but also in shallow waters, on coastal land, and in the atmosphere is collected in a central and open-access database and analysed by personnel with the help of AI technologies. Socio-economic factors, such as the high demand of a specific mineral on the market, are also factored in to predict and manage changes in the extraction pace and protection activities. The ISA has remained the main organisation controlling deep-sea mining activities on the seabed beyond national jurisdiction and has undergone deep change in its internal norms allowing for a pervasive transparency and increased flexibility in its activities and regulations. While on the one hand this increased the resilience of the system, financial viability of DSM suffered also due to the volatility of the DSM metals market. In any case, technological developments on land, particularly recycling, and societal change towards circular economies have determined a diminishing need of raw materials, thus alleviating the push for deep sea extraction. Operations in the deep sea are conducted using biomimetic technologies developed by marine engineers in collaboration with biologists to be unintrusive to deep-sea fauna. P3 perspective: Deep-sea connections Deep-sea mining is now old memory. The fermentation around the industry died even before a commercial operation happened in international water. Although it seemed that an energy transition might have been impossible without DSM, the major improvements in recycling and the decoupling of the economy rendered the practice futile. All this was accompanied by a paradigmatic shift in our relationship with Nature. Past extractive industries are unthinkable now due to the enormous harm that they bring to Planet Earth as a whole. Oceans and the deep sea are as close to humans’ conscience and care as the soil on which they walk. Still, when new materials are needed, humans can dive to the deep sea and communicate with its inhabitants to determine together which polymetallic nodule or how much softer sulphide deposit can be harvested. This was enabled by technological breakthroughs in diving equipment and symbiotic robotics amongst others. Knowledge is pursued not with the aim to manage the deep sea but to enhance the whole ecosystem capacity to sustain thriving life and interspecies collaboration. Extensive scientific knowledge of the deep sea and its biogeochemical characteristics is complemented by both human and other creatures’ indigenous knowledge. Cobalt-rich crusts are not mined because the technology currently available would be too invasive and destructive. Nevertheless, as the water levigates the rock and particles of metals are dispersed in the water, some people filter out the water and collect these. The deep sea belongs to no one and every living creature simultaneously – its flourishing cannot be separated from that of all other creatures, including humans. These three scenarios offer a peek into how different views of the world might impact deep-sea mining and Science, Technology, and Innovation directions related to a sustainable deep-sea. There are plenty of questions that the scenarios create and leave unanswered and plenty of open points that will be decided upon in the next years. Many of them are related to STI, including governance innovations, and many others engage with the complex geopolitical arena surrounding deep-sea mining. Will we create technologies to source deep-sea minerals sustainably? How will sustainability be conceptualised for the deep sea? How will developments in AI, big data and robotics impact the deep-sea mining industry? Which governance structure could effectively control extraction of minerals from the deep-sea? Can deep-sea minerals ever be recovered without harming deep-sea life? How will the rising attention to global commons impact activities in the deep sea? Will the DSM international challenge strengthen multilateralism or further break it down? Will deep-sea minerals be part of green transitions? Will the European Union prioritise assuring strategic material flows over environmental protection, or will such a trade-off not be required? How will trade-offs between ecological harm and ecological benefits be addressed? How would commercial DSM impact global trade flows and how would power relations and geopolitical strategies change? What will be the social consequences on land mines areas? Which countries will be the losers and winners at the prospect of DSM? Will deep-sea mining become an environmental taboo, similarly to nuclear energy? What knowledge will the EU require to approve deep-sea mining? [i] Joint Communication on the EU’s International Ocean Governance agenda: https://oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/publications/setting-course-sustainable-blue-planet-joint-communication-eus-international-ocean-governance-agenda_en

This autumn experts are developing alternative climate scenarios as part of a foresight project that helps prepare the 2nd Strategic Plan 2024-2027 of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for R&I. The project is conducted by the “Foresight on Demand” Consortium on behalf of the European Commission, DG RTD. In a Deep Dive area “Climate change and R&I: from social change to geoengineering”, together with the other members of the expert team, I am developing, among others, this 'deepening divisions' scenario. Get involved, comment on the scenario and relate the scenario to recent developments! Scenario dimensions Weak global governance; Unsustainable lifestyles; Open to risk-taking; Vigorous activism Demographics, economy and governance In 2040 Europe stands divided. Populist, secessionist governments are in power in Poland, Italy and France (amongst others). European institutions struggle to exercise power and influence. In the wider world relations with Russia remain uneasy following the division of Ukraine; China-US military clashes continue in the South China Sea as China accuses the US of funding and arming Tibetan separatists, and tensions escalate between the EU and the Pan-African Confederation over the continued death-toll amongst climate migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean. Global climate governance is just one of the many casualties. In this world nationalist competition over resources dominates international relations, and free trade is a long-lost dream. European economies continue to falter as supply chains further fragment. Populist movements verging on fascism are in the ascendance in dozens of countries, while local territorial defence and independence movements have become violent in several cases. Populations are divided and polarised, with consumption unabated. Wealthy elites retreat into secure compounds and gated communities. And while some environmental activists are trying to build resilient self-sufficient eco-villages, others have embraced violence, especially in the face of authoritarian policing of protest and attacks on political freedoms. Real and imagined threats of climate migrants and refugees from Africa continue to dominate political discourse. In every country border controls are strengthened. Walls, fences and deportation programs proliferate. The Mediterranean and its coasts are more like a war zone than a holiday destination, with naval forces and drones deployed to deter crossings. But political myopia and nationalism infect climate policy – with more focus on local, exclusionary adaptation than mitigation. Populist movements combine ethno-nationalist prejudice with continued support for fossil fuel use – rhetorically described as cheap and patriotic. Impacts and risk areas Climate change is both a trigger and a consequence of fragmentation and deepening divisions. While biodiversity losses multiply as temperature rises reach 1.7oC, climate scientists project temperatures rising further, beyond 3oC above pre-industrial levels. Impacts are already widely felt, not only in coastal communities and those affected by vanishing glaciers and melting permafrost, but more widely and especially in the form of prolonged heatwaves, massive wildfires and droughts during summers followed by autumn flooding. These conditions have devastated agricultural production and exacerbated pressures on electricity systems: droughts causing nuclear shutdowns due to lack of cooling water, whilst demands for energy rise with widespread use of air-conditioning. Energy and food prices have spiralled, fuelling food and energy poverty; undermining livelihoods, harming health and wellbeing for many, and fragmenting communities. Rising prices have also fuelled populist anti-EU and anti-climate action sentiment. Public sentiment, powered by populist media is further polarised by more radical climate activism using cyberattacks, blockades and violence against property to attack fossil power stations, airports and other targets (including geoengineering research facilities). Most states deploy anti-terror powers against climate activists, and paramilitary responses (tacitly ignored by state authorities) including assassination and kidnapping of activists have spread from the extractive frontiers of the global South to some European countries. Practices and technologies Scientists and technologists have demonstrated most of the suite of new climate technologies anticipated in 2020, including new-generation nuclear fission, carbon capture and storage (CCS), green and blue hydrogen and ammonia production, CCS has been linked not only to industrial processes but also to bioenergy (BECCS) and capture of CO2 direct from the atmosphere (DACCS). But none of these technologies have reached scale as supply chains, social licence, and investment flows have all been disrupted and undermined by international and national conflicts. As a result, scientists are now widely and urgently advocating and researching more radical and controversial technological approaches including ocean fertilisation for carbon removal, and large-scale albedo modification through GM crops, stratospheric aerosol injection or space mirrors. Trials of some of these technologies have attracted billionaire philanthropy eager to scale up their application. In parallel, suspicions and conspiracy theories abound on social media, multiplied by hostile state disinformation, to the effect that the droughts and floods are in fact a product of such ‘greenfinger’ geoengineering (rather than the reason for such experiments). Life-styles and activism For the wealthy, lifestyles remain luxurious, and most citizens aspire to enjoy such high levels of consumption and mobility. Products with green and ‘sustainable’ labels are scarce and expensive, even though widely considered to be mainly greenwash. In our divided society though, anti-consumerist riots and looting, involving destruction of merchandise or property are not uncommon. Climate activism takes multiple forms. For some, climate grief is expressed through embrace of religious faiths, and some engage in non-violent protest such as hunger strikes. Conventional NGOs continue to lack influence in polarised political debates, and more radical forms of activism have proliferated including demonstrations and mass arrests, hacktivism and cyber-attacks, and even eco-terrorism, sabotage and bombing

Renewing rural generations, via the provision of green jobs and accessible farming enterprises, has powered the EU-sponsored RURALIZATION project looking to promote synergies between agriculture policymakers and local rural communities in painting attractive rural futures. If the keyword in the use of land, from the 18th century onwards, was ‘urbanisation’, concentrating on industrialisation and city expansion, the current environmental challenges, including food security and carbon emissions, make a strong case for ‘ruralisation’. Sustained and long-term efforts to foster the regeneration of rural areas in Europe should take the stage to rebalance soil protection, shift economic activities to rural areas to safeguard local food supply chains and cater for the loss of biodiversity which is bound to negatively impact planetary health. Inverting the urban-centric trend requires re-thinking land use and identifying strategic issues that contribute to lowering pressure on cities, repopulate rural areas with new generations of farmers, and ensure the sustainability of the whole process. Behind the Horizon 2020 RURALIZATION initiative is the desire to make rural areas more appealing to new generations of farmers and inhabitants. Embracing rural futures A true rural regeneration is only possible if issues such as limited choice of services, fewer job opportunities and isolation due to poor connections are properly addressed. However, before diving into the improvement of the quality of life in rural areas, Professor Willem Korthals Altes, coordinator of the RURALIZATION project has no doubts: “Access to land is one of the key widespread barriers to entering farming as land ownership is largely concentrated in large companies or long-standing family businesses, driving away rural newcomers.” As a Professor in Land Development at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, Korthals Altes is an expert in governance of land development and a connoisseur of the legal complexities of modern land use. To get young generations on the fields, running small farms (with an eye to sustainable agricultural practices), and replacing retiring farmers, the land must be accessible! This is why RURALIZATION has not only united research organisations in rural policy brainstorming but also members of the Access to Land network, to formulate solutions and recommendations responding to the diverse needs and features of rural areas in Europe. RURALIZATION’s efforts towards promoting a constructive dialogue between actors from all levels of the agriculture chain around the allocation and use of land has led to a tangible result: a Handbook intended to support local authorities in ‘regenerating’ their rural areas. It offers ideas, tools, and field-based examples to inspire and enable local authorities to take action across Europe to protect farmland and make it work for the public good. To inform a forward-looking policy able to facilitate the settlement of new rural generations, RURALIZATION makes use of foresight. Foresight analysis was first employed to identify, through an exploratory analysis of megatrends, trends and weak signals, a large set of inclinations potentially having an impact on rural regeneration in thinking about rural futures. To better understand what the expectations are for a location to qualify as a ‘dream area’ and what kinds of people are dreaming about specific types of (rural) areas, an inventory of future dreams among the youth was carried out in 20 regions across 10 EU countries. “The result of asking 2,000 young people about their dream lives for the future has naturally yielded 2,000 different dreams”, says Korthals Altes, “but what we have noticed, in general, is that an increasing number of people hope to live more rural than where they are living now.” To turn these rural dreams into reality it is central to build both an accessible system for young people to make their income in rural activities as well as provide the infrastructure for them to have the desired quality of life in a non-urban context. In this respect, bucolic coastal areas have a high development potential and can provide a whole range of attractive socio-economic opportunities. Land access, farming and stewardship: informing policy to paint rural futures These foresight methodologies allowed RURALIZATION to develop a potentials matrix as a synthesis of the assessment process of rural trends and dreams. This output may serve as a benchmarking tool for a high-level vision of what is considered beneficial by stakeholders, experts and researchers in various types of rural settings. Local applications of foresight tools such as the potentials matrix may support European, national, regional and local actors in their assessments of alternative futures for their rural regions. How these futures will look depends on the course that governance of land and nature will take: “As land and nature are clearly also important investment goods, funds and environmental values are not always aligned”, notes Korthals Altes, “but if you want to protect nature you must take action not only in terms of regulating land allocation but also in terms of shaping the ‘marketing’ of how land will be managed by people in an environmentally-conscious manner.” Within the wider rural scenario, special attention should go to making a wiser use of coastal areas, promoting activities such as aquaculture production or the restoration of coastal wetlands. “Most EU agricultural policy is still guided by 1950s ideals which don’t take into account the current soil health scenarios and the fact that, to meet Green Deal objectives, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has to be re-structured to cater for an agroecological management of land”, says Korthals Altes. Currently, most subsidies coming from the Common Agricultural Policy are not supporting pathways for land acquisition by new farmers who are willing to engage in green developments. Looking at the social agenda, there is a need to consider who is managing the soil, which groups are ‘invested’ with its stewardship and how this is passed on. Part of the structural change needed in rural settings is not only a generational one, linked to the need to replace the aging population of farmers, but also to make the agricultural system more inclusive in terms of gender balance: “Land management is still a very masculine and patriarchal business, often tried to strict kinship-based structures; it’s almost impossible for people without a family-base in farming to step in”, Korthals Altes observes, “We have to move into the direction of facilitating new actors in joining, with social models that reflect current times”. Making ruralisation the norm, not the exception Korthals Altes is a firm believer that the future, including our agriculture and soil management, is what we make of it today, which paths humanity chooses to embark on by taking well-informed actions. A shift in people’s lifestyles towards ruralisation can be instrumental to boost sustainable agro-practices and re-balance the distribution of production, resources, and people from high-polluting urban settings to well-connected rural ones. To ‘go rural’ it is paramount to make this regulation of land ownership and access ideally integrated by innovative and participatory land policy instruments. The time is ripe to invest in more sustainable and agroecological uses of land: “Initiatives such as the Green Deal and the Farm to Fork are going in that direction but the scale and pace at which things are happening are worrying; too little, too slowly…”. The current outcomes of nature protection actions and policies already reflect this urgency: “Sure, we are seeing certain plants and animal species coming back but the negative developments still outweigh the positive ones”, reckons Korthals Altes. This is an article from the Horizon Futures Watch Newsletter (Issue I, May 2023) presented by Foresight on Demand

National governments and multi-lateral organizations like the European Union, OECD, and UNESCO have identified values and principles for artificial narrow intelligence and national strategies for its development. But little attention has been given to identifying the beneficial initial conditions for future Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The initial conditions for AGI will determine if Artificial Super Intelligence will evolve to benefit humanity or not. Even if international agreements are reached on the beneficial initial conditions for AGI, a global governance system will still be needed to enforce them and oversee the development and management of AGI. Since it may take ten, twenty, or more years to create and ratify an international AGI treaty and establish a global AGI governance system, and since some experts believe it is possible to have AGI within ten to twenty years, it is therefore important to work on these issues as soon as possible. The most critical AGI issues are its initial conditions and global governance. These issues are important for governments to get right from the outset. The Millennium Project is currently exploring these issues. https://www.millennium-project.org/transition-from-artificial-narrow-to-artificial-general-intelligence-governance/ Definitions AI is advancing so rapidly, that some experts believe that AGI could occur before the end of this decade (1); hence, it is time to begin serious deliberations about AGI. There are three categories of Artificial Intelligence (AI): narrow, general, and super. I define AGI as a general-purpose AI that can learn, edit its code, act autonomously to address novel and complex problems with novel and complex strategies similar to or better than humans, as distinct from Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) that has a more narrow purpose. Artificial Super Intelligence is AGI that has become independent of humans, developing its own purposes, goals, and strategies without human understanding, awareness, or control and continually increasing its intelligence beyond humanity as-a-whole. A gray area between Narrow and General is developing now. Large planforms are being created of many ANIs such as Gato (2) by DeepMind of Alphabet which is a deep neural network that can perform 604 different tasks from managing a robot to recognizing images and playing games – it is not AGI, but Gato is more than the usual ANI: “The same network with the same weights can play Atari, caption images, chat, stack blocks with a real robot arm and much more, deciding based on its context whether to output text, joint torques, button presses, or other tokens (3). Also the Wu Dao 2.0 by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (4) has 1.75 trillion parameters (5) trained from both text and graphic data. This allows it to generate new text and images on command and has its virtual student (Hua Zhibing) that learns from WuDwo 2.0 (6). AGI should not be confused with General Purpose AI Systems (GPAIS) (7) which is defined as an AI system “able to perform generally applicable functions such as image/speech recognition, audio/video generation, pattern detection, question answering, translation etc. These systems rely on “transfer learning” applying knowledge from one task to another. ChatGPT (8) is an upgrade from GPT-3 to GPT-3.5 that can generate human-like text and perform a wide range of language tasks such as translation, summarization, and question answering. (GPT-3 uses 175 billion machine learning parameters.) ChatGPT interacts with the user to produce sophisticated text from simple instructions or questions. See Appendix for an example of how it answered the first question in the second section below. It can also write and correct code, write music in different styles, organize information, and other uses being invented now. SingularityNet is also in this gray area. It brings together AI developers who want to create AGI and share code such that AGI might emerge from many interactions. The Athens Roundtable held at the European Parliament on 1-2 December 2022 did discuss General Purpose AI, but not AGI. The Future of Life Institute has assessed General Purpose AI and the AI Act (9), but not AGI. The Global AGI Race AGI does not exist. President Putin has said whoever leads AI will rule the world. China plans to lead international competition by 2030 (10). Although “AGI” or “Artificial General Intelligence” does not appear in the State Council Notice on the Issuance of the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan: A Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan (Released: July 20, 2017), terms such as “strong generalization capabilities…AI key general technology system…cross-medium analytical reasoning technology” does seem like AGI and the plan states that China will be “occupying the commanding heights of AI technology.” Since ANI is with us now, one can assume that President Putin and the Chinese Plan were referring to AGI. Therefore, it is also reasonable to assume that the “Great AGI Race” is on with both governments and corporations. In such a race, Deep Mind Co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis said people may cut corners making future AGI less safe. Adding to this race are the Brain Projects (11) in the EU, USA, China and Japan, and other neuroscience advances. Will AGI create more jobs than it replaces? What is different this time? Previous technological revolutions from the agricultural age to industrial age and on to the information age created more jobs than each age replaced. But the advent of AGI and its impacts on employment will be different this time because of: 1) the acceleration of technological change; 2) the globalization, interactions, and synergies among NTs (Next Technologies such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology, quantum computing, 3D/4D printing, robots, drones, computational science, as well as both ANI and especially AGI; 3) the existence of a global platform—the Internet—for simultaneous technology transfer with far fewer errors in the transfer; 4) standardization of data bases and protocols; 5) few plateaus or pauses of change allowing time for individuals andcultures to adjust to the changes; 6) billions of empowered people in relatively democratic free markets able to initiate activities; and 7) machines that can learn how you do what you do, and then do it better than you. Anticipating the possible impacts of AGI and preparing for the impacts prior to the advent of AGI could prevent social and political instability (12), as well as facilitate it broader acceptance. Some Current Questions About Future AGI AGI is expected to address novel and extremely complex problems by initiating research strategies from exploring the Internet of Things (IoT), interviewing experts, making logical deductions, learning from experience and reinforcement without the need for its own massive databases, and continually editing and re-writing its own code to continually improve its own intelligence. An AGI might be tasked to create plans and strategies to avoid war, protect democracy and human rights, manage complex urban infrastructures, meet climate change goals, counter transnational organized crime, and manage water-energy-food availability. To achieve such abilities without the future nightmares of science fiction, global agreements with all relevant countries and corporations will be needed. To achieve such an agreement or set of agreements, many questions should be addressed. Here are just two: How to manage the international cooperation necessary to build international agreements and a governance system while nations and corporations are in an intellectual “arms race” for global leadership. (IAEA and nuclear weapon treaties did create governance systems during the Cold War arms race.) And related: How can international agreements and a governance system prevent an AGI “arms race” and escalation from going faster than expected, getting out of control and leading to war, be it kinetic, algorithmic, cyber, or information warfare? Since the EC has led on some complex multilateral agreements, it could perform a great service by addressing some of these questions. Read more on the research on General Artificial Intelligence here or download the full report below. References When will singularity happy? 995 experts’ options on AGI (updated September 26, 2022) https://research.aimultiple.com/artificial-general-intelligence-singularity-timing/ https://www.deepmind.com/publications/a-generalist-agent Overview AI values, principle, an ethics https://openreview.net/forum?id=1ikK0kHjvj Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence https://www.baai.ac.cn/english.html Beijing-funded AI language model tops Google and OpenAI in raw numbers https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3135764/us-china-tech-war-beijing-funded-ai-researchers-surpass-google-and China unveils first domestically developed virtual studenthttp://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0604/c90000-9857985.html Council of the European Union General Purpose AI Systems (GPAIS) https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-14278-2021-INIT/en/pdf ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialoguehttps://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ General Pupose AI and the AI Act, an assessment by the Future of Life Institute https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/General-Purpose-AI-and-the-AI-Act.pdf State Council Notice on the Issuance of the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan Released: July 20, 2017 https://d1y8sb8igg2f8e.cloudfront.net/documents/translation-fulltext-8.1.17.pdf Inventory of Brain Projects Working Group https://www.internationalbraininitiative.org/inventory-brain-projects-working-group Glenn, Jerome and the Millennium Project team, Work/Technology 2050: Scenarios and Actions, The Millennium Project, Washington, DC, 2020.

The transition to renewable energy in Europe has evolved dynamically since the turn of the century. The share of renewable energy in the European Union more than doubled between 2004 and 2022. Nevertheless, renewable energy represents only 22 percent of overall energy consumption and 37 percent of electricity generation in the EU. In other words, Europe still has a long way to go, even when it comes to the relatively easy task of converting its electricity production to renewables. In the meantime, Europe’s goal to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, as enshrined in the European Climate Law, has shifted attention to more challenging tasks: the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from so-called hard-to-abate sectors, such as energy-intensive industries and long-distance transport. These sectors have in common that the direct use of renewable electricity does not offer a comparatively easy pathway for the elimination of greenhouse gases in these sectors. Instead, climate-neutral hydrogen - as feedstock for the production of basic chemicals and synthetic fuels or as a reduction agent in low-carbon steel making, to name a few applications - offers a promising pathway for many of these hard-to-abate sectors. This has raised the important question of where this hydrogen will come from in the future. The EU Hydrogen Strategy and the REPower plan envision the rapid ramp-up of renewable electricity-based hydrogen, the only climate neutral avenue for producing hydrogen. It has targeted the development of 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen in the EU and an equivalent amount of hydrogen to be imported from partner countries by 2030. These ambitious targets translate into additional renewable electricity generation of approximately 500 TWh, both in the EU and in partner countries. This is also roughly the amount needed to meet the EU’s pre-existing 2030 targets for renewable energy. Together, this means the EU would have to approximately double its renewable energy generation from 1000 TWh to around 2000 TWh per year by 2030. (A further increase of the EU’s renewable energy target has recently been proposed by the EU parliament.) Meeting these targets will have major implications for the future energy geography in Europe. While analysts have pointed to the economic and technical challenges of these goals, the spatial dimension of these developments is not explicitly addressed in the EU strategy and rarely features in policy discussions. The main responsibility for reaching these goals sits with the member states. However, the most ambitious strategies do not necessarily correspond to the geographies with the greatest potential to produce a surplus of renewable energy. For instance, Germany has one of the most ambitious hydrogen strategies, targeting 5 GW of electrolyzer capacity by 2030. However, among EU member states it has some of the lowest renewable energy potential relative to its existing electricity consumption (see figure 1 below). Spain is among the member states with one of the largest potential renewable energy surplus, and it has an estimated onshore wind power potential that is more than six times that of Germany. However, it is only targeting 4 GW of electrolyzer capacity by 2030. Greece, with onshore wind power potential that surpasses Germany’s by more than 70 percent, is targeting electrolyzer capacity of 750 MW by 2030. Similarly, Romania has about 50 percent more potential for wind power production than Germany but has yet to launch a national hydrogen strateg (for wind power potentials see JRC (2018) report on Wind energy potentials for EU and neighboring countries, especially page 38). Solar potential relative to its electricity consumption also vastly surpasses relative potential in Germany (see figure 2 below). Figure 1: Potential for wind power production in EU member states relative to 2016 power production (Source: IASS Potsdam, based on JRC, 2018) Figure 2: Solar energy potential in the European Union, by region (Source: JRC Energy and Industry Geography Lab, ENSPRESO dataset) This is partly offset by significant offshore potential in the North Sea, which will play an important role not only in meeting German hydrogen targets but also those of Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. These four countries have jointly declared their intention to build 20 GW of electrolyzer capacity by 2030, underpinned by 65 GW of offshore wind capacity. Beyond this targeted effort to exploit the potential of the North Sea, hydrogen ambitions in Europe do not correspond primarily to future renewable energy potential but governments’ financial capacity to invest in climate-friendly innovation and industrial development. Apart from the renewable-rich Nordics, Germany and Italy have the most ambitious targets for renewable-based electrolyzer capacity, despite comparatively low levels of renewable energy potential relative to their power demand. France has also formulated ambitious hydrogen targets. However, it represents a special case, given the high share of nuclear energy in its energy mix. It targets 6,5 GW of electricity-based hydrogen, the highest among member states, powered by either renewable or nuclear energy. The German strategy also places a strong emphasis on developing supply chains for the import of hydrogen to meet its future hydrogen demand. While these efforts address Germany’s expected gap in meeting its hydrogen demand, unlocking intra-European hydrogen trade is not the main priority. It also not explicitly tackled in the EU hydrogen strategy. Although the EU strategy acknowledges the need for imports from non-EU countries, the strategy does not propose any approach for aligning renewable potential among the member states with their hydrogen ambitions, leaving this to the member states. Neither Germany nor the EU engage actively with the question of future geographies of hydrogen demand. Rather, the implicit assumption is that existing demand centers, mainly located in Northern European countries, will largely remain in place, with hydrogen flows developing to satisfy this demand. To date, only Spain has formulated a vision that diverges from this conception, targeting hydrogen development both for export to Northern European demand centers and for the development of new, climate-neutral industrial supply chains in Spain. It is hoping to leverage its renewable energy potential to attract investment. Such a development has clear analogies in history. The availability of energy resources was instrumental in shaping Europe’s existing industrial geographies, located near centers of coal extraction or along waterways enabling their transportation. While current infrastructure and know-how located in existing industrial regions will no doubt also play an important role, renewable resources are likely to emerge as an important additional factor. To date European policy is largely blind to Europe’s renewable energy geography, presumably relegating this to the market forces driving investment decisions. However, in contrast to past energy transitions, current developments are not merely accompanied by governments. Rather policy is the central driver of these changes. Against this background, an engagement with these geographic dimensions and how they might influence the future of energy and industry in Europe could offer important new insights for European policy makers. Spelling out differing scenarios for Europe’s future energy geography and their implications for aspects such as energy security, industrial competitiveness as well as the environmental and social sustainability of hydrogen development could yield important insights for better positioning Europe and its Green Deal internationally. As Europe’s current energy crisis has revealed energy geographies - and how they are shaped by infrastructure decisions - matter.

“S&T&I for 2050” aims at broadening the focus of STI to encompass multiple conceptualisations of human-nature relations. To do this, a framework was constructed around the concept of ecosystem performance as driver of STI, instead of human performance. This places the attention on the flourishing of ecosystems that is deeply connected to human needs and wellbeing. Identifying STI and policy directions for ecosystem performance entails a conceptualisation of what an ecosystem is, how an ecosystem flourishes and what is the relation between humans and nature. We selected, analysed, and categorised fourteen schools of thought that have guided human activities towards ecosystem stewardship. Three perspectives resulted from this effort: “Protecting and restoring ecosystems”, concerned with preservation of ecosystems by managing the impact from human activities; “Co-Shaping socio-ecological systems”, concerned with simultaneous development of social practices and ecological processes towards resilience and sustainability renewal; “Caring within hybrid collectives”, concerned with the establishment of caring relationships in new collectives with humans and other entities on an equal level. These perspectives guided the delineation of future scenarios and STI developments in six thematic case studies. Download the paper delineating the framework: Main characteristics of the three perspectives on Ecosystem Performance PROTECTING AND RESTORING ECOSYSTEMS Schools of thought included in this perspective are: IMP Environmental Impact Assessment IPBES Model of biodiversity and ecosystem services BIR Biosphere Rules SEV Social Ecology Vienna School CO-SHAPING SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS Schools of thought included in this perspective are: SES Socio-Ecological Systems BRD Biomimicry & Regenerative Design PHH Planetary & Human Health PSB Planetary & Social Boundaries with some elements of two further schools of thought: SEV Social Ecology Vienna School GAI Facing Gaia CARING WITHIN HYBRID COLLECTIVES Schools of thought included in this perspective are: GAI Facing Gaia KIN Kinmaking PHK Posthuman Knowledge MSJ Multi-Species Justice BIC Biocentrism DEC Deep Ecology

In this Blog-post , I raised the first set of questions relevant to our scenario process. Meanwhile, we had a series of interviews with our experts, drafted a list of influencing factors and defined the scope of the scenarios. We collected the following list of factors: Global Global power constellation Access to raw materials and other resources Global consumption patterns Global economic growth Role of the global south Impacts of climate change Global migration flows Openness and volume of global trade Geopolitical stability / Conflict and war Global Communication and Mobility Patterns European Context & Policy European cohesion and role of European Commission Degree of autonomy & self-sufficiency of Europe Industrial and R&I policy Economy Industrial production and energy demand Implementation of Circular Economy Emission Trading (EU ETS) Economic orientation and development Regionalisation of the economy Society Values and sustainability of lifestyle Level of integration and inclusion; social equity/justice Degree of public engagement Technology (except Hydrogen technology) Innovativeness and experimentation (from precautionary risk averse to risk-taking) Electrification of sectors / dependence on fuels The organisation of the energy systems (central vs regional) Role and advances of digital transformation Which factors do you think are the most important for building the scenarios? Take part in our small survey and learn more about the influencing factors: https://cloud.foresight-cockpit.de/#/survey/anonymous/Yn6LNdxPQLmw9shbIxzJxA?lang=EN

Proposed scenarios about the future should come with a pinch of salt. Without being perfectly accurate, they help prepare policymakers for better or worse. The REGROUP project funded under the Horizon Europe programme aims to advise the EU on how to address post-pandemic policy and institutional challenges by analysing the societal and political consequences of COVID-19 and considering the normative implications of the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted significant inadequacies in global health governance, further exacerbated by an accumulation of economic, social, and institutional inequalities. However, such a crisis can also represent crucial turning points offering new prospects for political transformation. Entering a post-pandemic era, and looking back, one cannot help but note the record speed of technological advancements. And yet, the challenges of post-pandemic governance in Europe are particularly pressing and intricate, as they intersect with critical issues around the efficacy, fairness, and democratic nature of the EU's multi-level system. Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis has underscored the importance of anticipating and preparing for future crises to establish a more robust governance framework by adopting foresight methodologies. As we look towards a post-pandemic European Union, it becomes imperative to consider how we can better manage global risks, enhance institutional and democratic resilience, and promote adaptable and proactive governance approaches. Many initiatives have emerged to contribute to the revision of post-pandemic governance, including the REGROUP project funded under the Horizon Europe programme. The project gives priority to addressing the governance hindrances that have been observed during the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, it delves into other important topics that have gained significance during the pandemic. For instance, the digitalization of society has become a vital aspect of our lives and its progress has been rapidly accelerating. Lastly, the project addresses global risks and challenges that existed prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, and seeks to provide insights that can mitigate their future impact by informing strategies and actions early on. Launched in October 2022, REGROUP involves a consortium of 14 universities and think-tanks led by the University of Groningen, and is organized around a three-pillar methodology: diagnosis, evaluation, and prescription. By performing a diagnosis and evaluation of EU governmental structures, it becomes possible to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses, identify areas of improvement, and determine implications for legal and institutional benchmarks. Starting in February 2024, the findings from the diagnosis and evaluation process will inform the development of prescriptive measures, in which the foresight component will be employed. The prescriptive measures will build on research done in previous work packages and provide advice for policymakers in various forms. For example, Work Package 7 (WP7), will focus on envisioning a post-pandemic European Union, based on the legal and constitutional reflection following the Conference on the Future of Europe. WP8 addresses managing global risks from institutional and societal perspectives, and informing policymakers on how these perspectives can inform the global stage. Lastly, WP9 explores potential digital strategies for democratic resilience. Each of these packages will deliver a foresight paper, which aims to set an agenda for medium to long term (5 to 20 years) scenarios and trends. The foresight papers will also serve as a foundation for creating policy briefs that pave the way for future policy decisions and actions. REGROUP's foresight methodology relies on a two-step scenario building process that incorporates both thematic and temporal approaches. The first step involves the identification of empirical situations and likely trends and mapping out the socio-political dynamics and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second step involves expanding the temporal scope to encompass a broader range of potential scenarios as the timeframe increases. As the time horizon extends, the more uncertainty is involved. “Think about it as a cone,” says Piero Tortola, scientific coordinator of REGROUP. “We start with a narrow set of scenarios and as you go further in time, the cone expands”. Tortola strongly believes that it is important to cultivate a culture of foresight among policymakers. “The goal is not only to inform policymakers but also [foster] a context in in which policymaking is formulated on the basis of a long-view”. This is even more vital in light of the constant turnover of policymakers – the aim is that even when a political mandate ends, the culture of foresight will persist. Through this persistence, Tortola adds, you could “succeed in better preparing and grounding policymakers”. While policymakers often rely on foresight as a tool, it should not be exclusively restricted to them. Tortola asserts that input from a variety of actors, such as civil society organizations and leaders, as well as citizens, is necessary for a holistic approach towards foresight. By incorporating diverse perspectives in the foresight process, policymakers can ensure that their decisions have been well-informed, based on plausible realities, and grounded on a comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand. To this end, the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have further underscored the critical importance of this hostilic approach to building greater resilience and preparedness to deal with future crises. As the world looks to the future, there are a number of emerging trends that carry significant risks and challenges. For example, geopolitical tensions, such as the realignment of regional blocs and the rise of new global powers, can have profound implications on the global political and economic landscape. Climate change, though not only prevalent post-pandemic, is also a major challenge, with the shift towards renewable energy sources intensifying competition between countries for new resources and markets. This, in turn, could lead to a restructuring of the global economy around nations that are major producers and exporters of clean energy technologies. It is thus essential for economic players and policymakers to anticipate future trends and build the necessary foresight to respond to them effectively. This could involve greater integration of foresight into decision-making processes, the development of better foresight methodologies, and the implementation of new tools and training programs. To effectively address all future challenges, a two-fold strategy is required. We should adopt a "local-to-global" mindset at every step, and cultivate a robust foresight culture that includes the participation of all, from citizens to policymakers, to inform decision-making. This is an article from the Horizon Futures Watch Newsletter (Issue I, May 2023) presented by Foresight on Demand

The answer is probably, a classic: "it depends". Hydrogen is the smallest and lightest molecule in the world. It is about eight times lighter than methane. There's a lot of methane leakage around the world. And by "a lot", I really mean a lot. Satellite imagery by the European Space Agency collected data that proves there is significantly more leakage in the atmosphere than official estimates. And methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere (Source: Environmental Defense Fund - EDF). Some of this methane leakage is due to sheer industry negligence (oil and gas companies have been proven to do routine gas flaring), but also to bad casings, old pipes, and all sorts of infrastructure mishaps that are bound to happen in any industry. Now imagine how much easier is for hydrogen - a much lighter molecule than methane - to escape and leak, particularly when we blend it with natural gas in existing pipelines, as is the case in the plans of many countries in Europe - including Romania, my home country. What's the scientific evidence to date of the potential environmental consequences of methane leakage? EDF lab studies have shown that hydrogen leakage is, in the best case, around 1% but could go up to as much as 10%. And a 10% leak could lead to 0.1°C or 0.4°C increases, the scientists claim. And this is because hydrogen has an indirect global warming effect by extending the lifetime of other GHGs (Fan et al., 2022). UK-based scientific evidence brings about even more worrisome figures: hydrogen may have a 100-year global warming potential of about 11 times greater than carbon dioxide (Warwick et al., 2022). Compared to the warming it is trying to abate by displacing fossil fuels, it turns out that in a high leakage scenario, "hydrogen emissions could yield nearly twice as much warming in the first five years after replacing its fossil fuel counterparts." On the other hand, if leaks are minimal, the climate benefits are consistent - an 80% decrease in warming compared to fossil fuels over the same period of time. The danger is real, it seems, even in the case of green hydrogen, let alone in the case of blue hydrogen, where the combo between methane leaks and hydrogen leaks could be a truly deadly cocktail for the planet. Leakage is assumed to be lowest in industrial on-site usage and highest in the production process, followed by transportation and delivery, while not enough data is available for the end-use leakage. Specialists believe that measures such as designing new hydrogen infrastructure with a focus on leakage prevention and penalising leakage where it does occur, alongside focusing on incentivizing hydrogen in so-called "hubs" (industrial sites where it is both produced and consumed), to the detriment of decentralized usage (e.g., in heating and transportation), can still keep hydrogen a climate ally rather than a climate foe (Koch Blank et al., 2022). Research on these topics is still in its infancy, with most of the peer-reviewed reports released in 2022. It is clear that intense further research is needed on leakage risks, mitigation strategies, and warming effects. At the same time, however, as the "hydrogen rush" is already moving ahead at full speed in the EU, it's probably worth introducing strong safeguards from the very beginning, in parallel to the advance of sciences: prioritise green over any other colour of hydrogen prioritise hydrogen in sectors where it can be easily produced and consumed onsite (and which are hard to decarbonize to start with, like the fertilizer industry or steel production) and deploy hydrogen at scale in other sectors (e.g.: transportation, heating) later. This probably makes sense from a basic business planning perspective, too. create new infrastructure for hydrogen, and don't retrofit old pipes that leak. put in place the highest level industry standards for leakage prevention unlike methane, where many jurisdictions are still not taxing leakage with hydrogen; let's not repeat the mistakes of the past, and let's design a leakage penalty system from the very beginning. References: Ilissa B. Ocko and Steven P. Hamburg, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), 2022, “Climate consequences of hydrogen emissions”, in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 9349–9368, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9349-2022 Fan, Z., et al, 2022, “Hydrogen Leakage: A Potential Risk for the Hydrogen Economy”, Columbia, SIPA, Center on Global Energy Policy, available at https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/pictures/Hydrogen%20Leakage%20Regulations,%20designed,%207.21.22.pdf Koch Blank T. et al., 2022, “Hydrogen Reality Check #1: Hydrogen Is Not a Significant Warming Risk”, available at https://rmi.org/hydrogen-reality-check-1-hydrogen-is-not-a-significant-warming-risk/

What could a European energy system that includes hydrogen look like in 2040 in the context of different global, political, economic and social constellations in and around the continent? This is the central question in our scenario process with our expert group and guests. In the current phase, we are developing the socioeconomic/-political scenarios that will significantly impact what a European energy system based on abundant hydrogen could look like. In a series of interviews at the beginning of the scenario process, we identified the following six key factors: (1) Global Power Constellations; (2) European Integration and Cohesion; (3) The Degree of Autonomy and Self-Sufficiency in Europe; (4) The Focus of European and Global Policy; (5) The Values, Preferences, and Sustainability of Lifestyles; and (6) the Organisation of Energy Systems. Currently, we are exploring in more detail how these factors can shape the energy system: Where does the (primary) renewable energy come from? Is it produced within Europe? Does it come from imports? Or is it a mix of both imports and production? How is hydrogen transported to and within Europe? Is hydrogen produced more centrally and then transported? Or mostly decentral? Are there differences between cities and rural areas? How much industrial production will be taking place in Europe, and how concentrated will it be regionally? What are the end uses of hydrogen? Furthermore, how much hydrogen is needed? For example, one can easily imagine that hydrogen production needs to happen in Europe if the trade is restricted due to conflicts. Consequently, the question is how much energy is available (and needed) in such a Europe. The answer to this question depends on the energy consumption of the industry, transport, and households and the rate of investments in renewable energy infrastructure. Energy sufficiency, in this case, might very well be a political decision. The following paragraphs present the socioeconomic/-political scenarios that the experts have developed. The possible configurations of an energy system for each scenario will be presented in a subsequent report. Some presented future developments are more likely than others, some are already visible today, and some are preferable. In total, we cannot predict or forecast the exact future. We can explore various potential futures to find the correct answers to support the developments we want to see in the future and prevent those that we consider undesirable. Overview of the resulting scenarios Based on a morphological analysis with a consistency check, we identified four specific scenarios: I The United States of Europe Ia Primacy of sustainability – circularity with high tech The world took climate change seriously. The United Nations are recognised as a sort of world government. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union is extended to nearly all policy domains and strengthened on all levels (legislation, executive/law enforcement, jurisdiction on central, regional and national levels). National governments have transferred power to the European level and their regions. European nations amongst themselves cooperate politically and economically in a very integrated way. The former primacy of “economic development and growth” has now turned into “sustainability and circular economy”. As a result, some large transnational companies focused on industrial production struggled and went bankrupt because investing in environmentally friendly production was too expensive. This consolidation of industrial production has led to a reorientation of markets towards digital services, recycling industries, and technological innovation, including research on new materials and furthering efficiency. Material cycles are mostly closed, and the material turnover is strongly reduced. Consequently, the input of new raw materials is barely necessary. Europe is widely autonomous and self-sufficient both in terms of materials and energy. While global trade is possible, import and export rates are relatively low. Ib-Forced sustainability – circularity based on frugality The former bipolarity between East and West does not exist any more. Western dominance declined due to internal conflicts within the United States. Russia and China have allied. New power centres emerged around India, Brazil, South Africa, and the US is trying to regain influence. This reconfiguration provoked ever-returning conflicts in various regions of the world. Global trade is limited as a result of conflict and terror. European countries moved closer together and strengthened the European Commission as a European government that takes care of common security, foreign affairs and sustainability policy. European nations are focussing on a single European market. Means of a circular economy – recycling, reusing, reducing, refurbishing, refusing, etc. – are widely applied to most of the sufficiently abundant resources in Europe that impact the well-being of its citizens. Local orientation, appropriate and affordable technologies, and intra-European trade play a key role in the well-being and content of society's living. This shift in orientation implied the adaptation of certain societal habits (travelling less, changing consumption patterns, eating more local/regional food, etc.) leading to a “purpose-economy”. The means of the Green Deal are the guiding principle of European regulation and politics. Only that the focus is not on economic integration but on the social and environmental dimensions of sustainability as formulated in the Green Deal. The economy is oriented towards an efficient exchange of goods and services, as opposed to (financial) growth. Europe is mainly autonomous and based on a renewable energy system. Emissions trading and carbon border adjustment mechanisms combined with other due diligence mechanisms underpin the focus of environmentally friendly and climate-protective economic activities. II Economisation – Primacy of the Price A privatised world Large multinational companies dominate the world. They have their security and supervision installations and even private military services. As they have more financial power at their disposal than some single nations, they have large lobbying capacities and a remarkable influence on political decisions. A significant share of infrastructure and terrain is privatised, causing citizens, other (smaller) companies, and partly states to be highly dependent on large companies. The European Union as we know it today does not exist any more. Most European countries have negotiated bilateral agreements to assure trade and secure peace. The EU Commission still exists in a consolidated form in the function of an advisory council – comparable to the United Nations. Global markets are highly efficient, and global agreements between multinational companies assure perfect global distribution of raw materials and goods. The whole economy follows the principle of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The multinational companies recognised environmental threats and “no action” prices early. Therefore, high environmental standards were implemented quickly because the negotiation and legislation processes are lengthy. The level of pollution decreased significantly worldwide. Societies’ values are oriented towards material status and consumption. Nonetheless, the private company-owned leasing and renting systems enable sustainable and affordable solutions for society, ensuring high living standards. III Green Deal for Europe A western led world The US and the Western countries (G7) remain the global economic and technological leaders. China and Russia seek to cooperate, and multiple agreements are in place to ensure that conflicts remain few. Trade with China and Russia is restricted, creating shortages of certain raw materials. The policy of the EU Commission is ambitious, setting far-reaching goals for various political themes. The priorities are environmental and climate policy. Nonetheless, the administrative apparatus is large and slow in decision-making. The interests of various countries vary significantly. Despite that, Europe is internationally strong, and its policies are effective. Europe is technologically advanced and applies recycling as well as other circular economy means, like reusing and refurbishing techniques. The economy is strongly based on research and innovation, and technology transfer, enabling a circular economy on a global scale. High-tech, constant innovations, new materials and digitalisation help achieve energy and material efficiency, relieving the pressure on the environment and supporting healthy lifestyles. European policy is focused on the European single market. Emissions trading and carbon border adjustment mechanisms combined with other due diligence mechanisms underpin the focus of Europe's environmentally friendly and climate-protective economic activities. These mechanisms, together with global technology transfer, assure global trade. Links to other articles and the documentation of the process: Key factor catalogue https://www.futures4europe.eu/post/hydrogen-economy-in-europe-2040 https://www.futures4europe.eu/post/scenarios-of-a-hydrogen-economy-2040 https://www.futures4europe.eu/post/green-hydrogen-global-hydrogen-justice-just-energy-transition-for-all https://www.futures4europe.eu/post/global-race-on-hydrogen

The project “S&T&I for 2050” is structured around five intertwined tasks: The conceptual base for the project was built on existing scientific literature, on feedback provided by workshops, experts, and EC stakeholders, and on quality assurance provided by three external key experts. The result of this task is a framework of three perspectives on ecosystem performance: Protecting and restoring ecosystems, Co-shaping socio-ecological systems, Caring within hybrid collectives. To identify current and emerging STI trends in Task 2, a series of mapping exercises that relied on quantitative methods were performed. Most importantly a Dynamic Argumentative Delphi was conducted. Six of the major thematic areas of STI trends were selected for advancing six case studies. The case studies conducted related to the following topics: Soil health, with the title “Soil to Soul” Land use, with the title “Land Use Futures” Systems of production and consumption, with the title “From Waste Management to Regenerative Economy” Data uses, with the title “Data as Representation” Rights of nature, with the title “Law for Nature” Developments in the micro- and nano-cosmos, with the title “Ecosystems and Micro-and Nano Cosmos”

This autumn, experts are developing alternative climate scenarios as part of a foresight project that helps prepare the 2nd Strategic Plan 2024-2027 of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for R&I. The project is conducted by the “Foresight on Demand” Consortium on behalf of the European Commission, DG RTD. In a Deep Dive area “Climate change and R&I: from social change to geoengineering”, together with the other members of the expert team, I am developing, among others, this 'coalition of sustainable communities' scenario. Get involved, comment on the scenario and relate the scenario to recent developments! Scenario dimensions Weak global governance; Sustainable lifestyles; Adverse to risk-taking; Vigorous activism Impacts and risk areas It's 2040, and the seeds of a new Europe are beginning to emerge following two decades of increased social conflict driven by interrelated financial, geopolitical, and climate crises. Between 2020 and 2040 global warming reached 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels and Europe experienced flooding, heat waves, and emerging diseases that generated substantial social disruption and social insecurity. A series of financial crises, combined with the tensions of economic reorganization (e.g. the loss of jobs), geopolitical tensions, and climate migration have led to decreased trust in government, large companies, and financial institutions. Demographics, economy and governance The past two decades have therefore triggered a rapid change in many social practices and institutions. National government and multinational companies have lost relevance, and capitalism and national state power are no longer dominant. With some delay, but with growing influence, a diversity of sustainable communities have now emerged as a bottom-up driven approach to address large-scale environmental challenges such as climate change and sustainable food production. Many of these communities were initially focused on food system transformations, because industrial food production underpinned so many of the risks and impact areas described earlier, but also because food is so central to social capital and human health. Initial successes around community organization on food issues allowed trust in new community councils to grow. Communities began to support healthy food production and consumption practices and organize against food multinationals. As climate migration continued to increase, these increasingly well-organized community forums also took on the integration of migrants into communities and were so effective that national governments began to rely on them to stabilize communities in the face of many challenging global and regional environmental issues. The importance of rural farming areas increased, and many people moved to the countryside to participate in increasingly important sustainable farming communities. Urban areas became better connected to rural areas, in part because good, healthy food was central to communities. Thus, general knowledge related to food production and ecosystem resilience increased across and within communities. By the time the oil industry finally collapsed completely, community councils were experienced and held power and the trust of communities, and the major shift in values towards community and environmental resilience was strengthened. Power now lies in these decentralized communities, networks, and cooperatives, with substantial decreases in wealth inequality and ownership of private property. Europe is witnessing unprecedented growth in the sharing economy and an interest in circular economies. People are now emphasizing the importance of community, time, and collectives, and de-emphasizing private ownership and wealth creation. Life-styles and activism Today, there are different types of communities across Europe. People live in either coalitions of (1) cities (city- states), which are managed as multifunctional ecosystems with high levels of biodiversity and green infrastructure; (2) coalitions of villages and little towns (hybrid communities), within multifunctional landscapes that host cooperatives and small-to-medium scale sustainable farms; or within (3) traditional land-based communities, autonomous regions controlled by indigenous communities. While certain aspects of life differ across these communities – e.g. technology, transport, currency, and religion – there is a mainstreaming of values around a relationship with nature, which has shifted from extractive and consumptive, to ones of humans-in-nature, and this is reflected in land and natural resource use. Practices and technologies Initially, coalitions and connections between disparate communities were underpinned by decentralized peer-to-peer web platforms. Increasingly these platforms became focused on creating positive social and ecological impact and nurturing a vibrant community of young social activists and environmental enthusiasts who were willing to learn from each other and promote each other in creating a sustainable world together. The growth and proliferation of these platforms have now congealed into a loose, bottom-up driven online global sustainability network. The rewilding of nature, especially urban areas to make them greener and more connected to surrounding rural landscapes, is happening at rapid rates. Europe is now seeing multiple “bright spots” where ecological richness, diversity, and productivity are being regenerated and providing opportunities for people living there to achieve spiritual, and economic development. The radical decentralization of energy production and distribution – together with the cost of renewables crossing a price threshold - has been a key catalyst of these social changes. But other technologies have contributed, such as the democratization of driverless vehicles. As these forms of transportation are now becoming ubiquitous, they are helping to free up enormous amounts of space in urban areas that had previously been used for parking areas and wider roadways than were needed, given the smaller number of vehicles on the road and more efficient traffic flow. Acknowledgment This scenario is heavily inspired and influenced by European future scenarios developed in Raudsepp-Hearne, C., G. D. Peterson, E. M. Bennett, R. Biggs, A. V. Norström, L. Pereira, J. Vervoort, et al. 2020. “Seeds of Good Anthropocenes: Developing Sustainability Scenarios for Northern Europe.” Sustainability Science 15 (2): 605–17.

Sharing lessons learned in foresight practices and experiences is important for the exchange for an impactful foresight community. The Mutual Learning Exercise can help foster community building and foresight capacities in different member states. Foresight studies, previously known as future studies or futures research, have a rich history dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. Over the years, these studies have expanded significantly in many countries, especially in the field of research and innovation (R&I). As we face rapid changes and uncertainty in today's world, there is a growing demand for policymakers to incorporate systematic foresight into their decision-making processes. By providing strategic intelligence and a long-term perspective, foresight can help governments better anticipate future opportunities and challenges. The OECD has emphasized the need for all governments to build greater anticipatory capacity and stresses the importance of institutionalizing the use of strategic foresight in R&I policy. Indeed, foresight has proven instrumental in informing the design and implementation of R&I policy through three distinctive roles linked to targeted impacts: corrective (addressing systemic failure and policy lock-ins), disruptive (focus on crisis and transition), creative (stimulating enabling conditions for new structures) The EU's response to ongoing crises and future challenges involves addressing this growing demand for strategic foresight. This includes efforts to create a European foresight community by connecting national institutionalized foresight. This strategy is notably being developed in the context of the European Commission-funded Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on research and innovation foresight (R&I foresight). The MLE aims to create a platform for the exchange of valuable information, experiences, and innovative practices in the field of research and innovation (R&I) foresight across EU and associated countries. By fostering collaboration between different groups, the MLE seeks to inspire the development of impactful R&I foresight communities as an important element of the European Research Area (ERA). The MLE is focussing on 5 topics that have led or will lead to the publication of thematic papers: Overview of R&I foresight. Institutionalising foresight capability creating wide foresight communities in the R&I system. Citizens’ engagement approaches and methods. Foresight, the twin transition, and potential disruptions. From foresight for Smart Specialisation to engagement in EU Research Programmes, Missions, and Partnerships. The first thematic paper examines the current state of foresight in the EU, including practices at the national level in both public and private sectors, success factors and challenge to future foresight practices. The second thematic paper, published in March 2023, delves deeper into the challenges and success factors for research and innovation (R&I) foresight. The paper explores how government foresight plays a role in various countries, the foresight community building process across Europe, and the main findings of a dedicated survey conducted as part of the Mutual Learning Exercise on foresight between October and November 2022. The first part highlights the diverse approaches and experiences of Member States and other advanced countries that have contributed to an expanding role for government foresight. The paper identifies parameters that significantly influence the extent to which foresight plays a role in government, such as the country's size and location, the maturity of policy context, the level of internationalization, and the success of institutionalizing foresight. In the second part, the focus shifts to the European level, highlighting opportunities to create a European foresight community, building on existing institutionalized foresight at the national level. It also discusses recent strategies put in place such as the EU-wide Foresight Network, EU Foresight-on-Demand, or the Foresight Europe Network of the Millennium Project. The final part of the paper covers the key findings of a dedicated survey conducted as part of the Mutual Learning Exercise on foresight between October and November 2022. These thematic papers as well as those still forthcoming share the goal of advancing the development of a community and enhancing the capacity of member states to take part in foresight and R&I policy planning through enhanced knowledge-sharing, cooperation, and active learning. This is an article from the Horizon Future Watch Newsletter (Issue 1, May 2023), presented by Foresight on Demand

by AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Innovation Systems and Policy The Russian invasion of Ukraine has turned the post-cold war world order upside down, and we are witnessing new global power constellations, block-building, and uncertainties that affect not only issues of military, deterrence, and defense but also the global economy, prosperity, and the social situation of the people. In the midst of this turmoil, the EU is confronted with finding a proper position and redefining its policies, its foreign, as well as internal relations. There is a chance for a proactive new neighborhood policy. Will the EU seize the momentum? In 2022, the post-cold war world order, which very much determined the inner state of European affairs as well as the EU’s position on the geopolitical scene, appears to be shaken by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A new divide is tearing the European continent apart: the EU and its allies in defense of democratic and pluralistic values on the one side and an authoritarian and autocratic regime threatening these values on the other. This disruption might even go beyond Europe if new international blocs and confrontations emerge. The threat concerns not only traditional values but also lives and material prosperity. Moreover, not only do these sudden changes push the EU to take a military stance by providing weapons to Ukraine and reconsidering its own defense capabilities but they must also be seen against the background of an accelerating climate crisis. While the impacts of climate change threaten many regions in the EU directly, they also put more indirect pressure on migration and the economy. The war in Ukraine is fueling the drivers of climate change, and therefore, many Europeans are torn between contradictory moods: indifference and solidarity; fragmentation and cohesion; empowerment and desperation. Another factor that affects the EU greatly is the US foreign policy. Will the US continue its military dominance in Europe, delivering military weapons, personnel, and intelligence, as well as pursuing its own interests in Eastern Europe, or will it take a post-hegemonic position and withdraw from the European continent, leaving the conflicts to be solved by EU and the rest of NATO? Domestic developments in the US can have tremendous effects on geopolitics. This uncertainty feeds the fear of the future and gives rise to the weaponization of everything and the new geo-political realism: budget increases for deterrence and budget cuts on social-political topics. Accompanying energy shortages and reversing climate-neutral energy policies are contributing to an economic crisis and the social division of society. The past months have turned many future visions and prospects upside down: those who had expected modern wars to be fought mainly with and against autonomous and AI-based weapon systems coupled with comprehensive disinformation campaigns were taught a lesson. While material battles wear out old-fashioned weapons systems and pointlessly cost human lives, cyber wars are fought at all fronts, and deep fake has become a fact with social media, thus instantiating the phenomenon of hybrid warfare, a term coined back in 2007. A central question of the near and long-term future is: what will the geo-political power distribution look like? Will Europe succeed in the geopolitical struggle for agency? And if so, at what price? Are there any new global leaders in sight, and will they be able to guarantee global peace, democratic values, and economic prosperity? What will be the role of international institutions? Does diplomacy have a chance? What are the perspectives outside of the EU and Europe? Will there be future options for pathways to collaborate in order to avoid conflagration all over the planet? What can be the role of the EU? Will the EU be able to install an intelligent and strategic neighborhood policy to enlarge the belt of democracies around it through diplomatic, economic, and military ties? These and other questions were explored in our workshop following a 3-time-horizon foresight approach: the resulting four scenarios will be discussed in the upcoming blog posts. Meanwhile, we are looking forward to hearing your thoughts - please comment on these questions in the sections below!

Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research Since hydrogen energy, in particular green hydrogen, is increasingly regarded as an important energy carrier in the EU's transition strategies towards a carbon-neutral future, questions concerning both the shape and size of a hydrogen economy need to be asked now. Green hydrogen, it is assumed, can play a significant role in the de-carbonization of high-energy-intensive industries and (some means of) transport as it can both deliver and store a tremendous amount of energy. For hydrogen energy to be sustainable - in other words, for it to be "green" - it must be produced from renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar. However, since at least in some EU countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, the potential of renewable energy production is limited in the sense that it won't be able to meet projected green hydrogen demands, policymakers are increasingly looking to establish international partnerships to produce green hydrogen outside the EU and import it for national use - with a particular focus on countries in the Global South. Resource extraction from the Global South for use by populations and industries in the Global North is nothing new and has often been accompanied by maladies such as environmental pollution, poverty, economic decline, elite conflicts, and even civil strife in countries of the Global South (This is often and slightly misleadingly referred to as the "resource curse" as it is not the existence of natural resources per se that results in unstable political regimes and economies but the power relations and political strategies around them). Extracting and using energy from renewable resources, such as solar and wind, to produce and subsequently export green hydrogen might differ from extracting natural gas, oil, minerals and wood and could offer an opportunity to leave carbon-locked pathways and relationships. However, nothing suggests that the current mode of international interactions and the logic of partnership between the Global South and the Global North will change automatically when it comes to hydrogen production and export. Change will require conscious decision-making and actions on behalf of European (import) countries. The goal of a "just" energy transition is more or less explicitly part of the climate and energy transition goals of the EU as well as the UN's SDGs but definitions of what it means to ensure a just hydrogen transition are still subject to perception and negotiation. At its minimum, however, a just hydrogen transition needs to include the principle that the advance of the energy transition in one part of the world (or for a specific group) cannot be to the detriment of another - now and in the future. Specifically, a just hydrogen transition needs to ensure that international hydrogen partnerships will not prioritize hydrogen production and export at the cost of failing to achieve the national climate and energy transition goals of the export countries. The success of a just hydrogen transition can be implemented and assessed along different justice dimensions put forward by scholars of environmental and energy justice over the past two decades. A vast body of literature on distributional, procedural, and recognition justice highlights that justice is not just a matter of institutionalized access points and equal distribution even though these dimensions of justice are not to be neglected (see for example Sovacool 2016 and Sovacool et al. 2017). Particularly scholars of political ecology have brought questions of power and recognition to the debate of just transition: Who has the resources to access the conversation, who has a seat at the table to have their concerns heard, and who has the power to implement decisions? Furthermore, scholarship has pointed to the role of multi-levels and scales when conceptualizing justice in the energy transition (see for example Jenkins et al. 2018). A wind park built on land claimed by customary land rights might have immediate negative effects on the local population while having positive effects on national and regional greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, both the past and the future bring additional dimensions of justice to the table. Europe's history as colonizers puts the responsibility on contemporary European policymakers to not repeat Europe's past mistakes and to - at the same time - avoid replacing current energy transition costs onto future generations. Dimensions of justice are complex and have immediate and visible implications for the everyday lives and bodies of (parts of the) populations in the Global South. The current mode of international interactions and the logic of North-South partnership do nothing to correct longstanding injustices and inequalities. Hydrogen strategies, that take justice seriously, need to address these issues rather immediately.

Global commons have been traditionally defined as those parts of the planet that fall outside national jurisdictions and to which all nations have access. International law identifies four global commons, namely the High Seas, the Atmosphere, the Antarctica and the Outer Space (1). These resource domains are guided by the principle of the common heritage of mankind. Resources of interest or value to the welfare of the community of nations – such as tropical rain forests and biodiversity - have lately been included among the traditional set of global commons as well, while some define the global commons even more broadly, including science, education, information and peace. To incorporate the potential for overuse by some at the expense of others, they can also include the atmosphere, land, ocean, ice sheets, a stable climate and biodiversity (2). According to the Global Commons Alliance, there are currently two definitions of the global commons: One is based in geopolitics. In this definition the global commons are areas – and their potential economic resources – that lie beyond national jurisdiction: the atmosphere, the high seas, Antarctica and outer space. The second definition has its roots more in economics than geopolitics and relates to how shared resources can be overused by some at the expense of others, regardless of national jurisdiction. One of the main characteristics of global commons is that they have a value for humankind and the planet. In some cases they even play a crucial role in the survival of our species. More recently, cyberspace has also been regarded as meeting the definition of a global common. (Luk van Langenhove) The global commons, comprising the areas and resources beyond the sovereigny of any state, build upon the heritage of Grotius’s idea of mare liberum – an idea that aimed to preserve the freedom of access for the benefit of all (3). However, the old mare liberum idea digressed into ‘first come, first served’ advantages for industrialised countries. Especially at the initiative of developing countries, it has now been replaced by a new law of international cooperation and protection of natural wealth and resources beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. According to Vogler, global commons can be considered as “social constructs that overlay, interpret and allocate ‘brute’ physical facts such as the gravitational forces in space, marine organisms, or deep seabed features that exist independently of our observation (Searle, 1995). The designation of areas and resources as global commons is evidently related both to technological change and scarcity, and both have combined to shape current definitions of the commons problem. ….the list of candidates for global commons status continues to grow. Cyberspace or the ‘digital ecosystem’, intellectual property and crop genetic resources are all so described with attendant implications for governance and security. The defining characteristic of commons relates to the question of access. One shared characteristic of the global commons is their close association with scientific discovery and developing technological capability (mare liberum 1609, Antarctica 1958, outer space from 1957). There has been substantial recent interest in the global commons amongst the military and strategic studies communities (Jasper, 2010). Their paramount concern is, as ever, the maintenance of access to strategically significant parts of the global commons. Access is also at the heart of environmental framing of the commons, but here it is the consequences of an open access regime and associated tragedies of resource degradation, depletion or destruction that are usually highlighted. Towards a Taxonomy of Commons Drawing on the work of Susan Buck (4), this paper outlines a draft taxonomy of commons, distinguishing between local, international and global commons as well as common pool resources. According to Susan Buck, commons are resource domains in which common pool resources are found. “Common pool resources are subtractable resources managed under a property regime in which a legally defined user pool cannot be efficiently excluded from the resource domain. International commons or global commons are very large resource domains that do not fall within the jurisdiction of any one country. International commons are resource domains shared by several nations, such as the Mediterranean Sea and Antarctica (although recent United Nations environmental treaties have affected the Antarctic regime so that it has some of the characteristics of a global commons). Global commons are resource domains to which all nations have legal access, such as outer space. The distinction between the two is important, especially because international commons are exclusionary while global commons are not. “ (Buck) References: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/untaskteam_undf/thinkpieces/24_thinkpiece_global_governance.pdf https://post.parliament.uk/environmental-stewardship-of-the-global-commons/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2016.1154441 Distinguishing between global commons, common pool resources and public goods https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315086415/global-commons-susan-buck

This autumn experts are developing alternative climate scenarios as part of a foresight project that helps prepare the 2nd Strategic Plan 2024-2027 of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for R&I. The project is conducted by the “Foresight on Demand” Consortium on behalf of the European Commission, DG RTD. In a Deep Dive area “Climate change and R&I: from social change to geoengineering”, together with the other members of the expert team, I am developing, among others, this 'green dream' scenario. Get involved, comment on the scenario and relate the scenario to recent developments! Scenario dimensions Strong global governance; Sustainable lifestyles; Adverse to risk-taking; Vigorous activism Impacts and risk areas in 2040, global warming stays below 1.3C above pre-industrial levels and is expected to stabilised below 1.5C. While this is resulting in broadly moderate changes and risks in the existing climate, in some areas like coral reefs and glaciers impacts are severe. Hazards in Europe are mostly visible in key exposure areas, such as cities, and settlements in low-lying areas, affecting key infrastructure. Hazards include moderate sea level rise and increased heatwaves that affect human health and the agricultural sector. Climate risks assessments are regularly employed to assess how much adaptation is necessary. Demographics, economy and governance High levels of mitigation and adaptation are driven by the EU strategic shift towards sustainable energy autonomy, accelerated by the war in Ukraine in the early 2020s. Climate policy is also strongly driven by member states and regional authorities, particularly in higher-risk areas. Guidelines issued for European businesses, such as the EU Taxonomy and ESG investments have heavily influenced and steered businesses towards more sustainable practices for several decades. This has encouraged European climate business to grow and lead the global markets, supported by decades of joint research and development towards just transitions. The EU has been successful in leading global governance efforts in climate policy and major powers like the US and China have joined forces to push other lagging countries to strengthen the commitments. The countries have also ratified the Global Carbon Tax Agreement and the precautionary Pact for Common Geoengineering Mechanism. The former aims to alleviate past injustices by using proceeds for restorative climate and development measures globally. The latter provides the forum to discuss geoengineering approaches in an transparent way. All this is backed by international financial cooperation for mitigation and adaptation, ensuring also funds for developing countries. The EU celebrates its ten-year anniversary of banning investments in fossil fuel-based assets. Within the EU, the institutional redesign has drawn heavily on the principles of just transition and climate justice, building wide support for climate action. At the local level, citizen assemblies are a common way of engaging people. EU-wide Climate Barometer+, a deliberative policy tool which gauges European public opinion and is rarely ignored when decisions are made in terms of climate policy. It is employed Unionwide at regular intervals to gauge the public opinion and acceptability of climate policy. These include risk acceptance surveys of climate policy (strategy and implementation), and although the results are not legally binding, they nevertheless raise the level of compliance of policies across the Union. Acceptance of risk continues to be low, steering the options towards the “precautionary principle” and also screening out some climate solutions. Practices and technologies Official climate policies have taken up many initiatives of civil movements, among others flexible and or shorter work weeks, promotion of shared housing and plant-based diets. Furthermore, the focus on responsible research and innovation to ensure social acceptability of new practices and technologies have supported the rapid diffusion of prosumer schemes of urban farming and renewable energy micro-grids and mobility, for instance. Integrated systemic approaches building on synergies between adaptation and mitigation and sustainability more broadly have created green, liveable and walkable cities, and neighbourhoods. European public-private partnerships are ‘exporting’ this know-how, widely requested across the world with supported social innovations and mechanisms of deliberative democracy for informed decision-making regarding climate. The EU climate policy portfolio also includes some less risky geoengineering options. In accordance with the new Common Geoengineering Mechanism, the EU is championing international pilots on ocean alkalinization and de-desertification and directing significant investments in biochar, extensive peatland and wetland restoration across the EU and scaling up permaculture and agroforestry practices. Acceptability of new geoengineering options is gauged through deliberative tools before they are piloted. The social and environmental impacts of any new geoengineering are assessed based on the Directive for NBS (for mitigation, adaptation and carbon removal), which sets effective standards and mechanisms to prevent undesirable side-impacts. Lifestyles and activism In Europe, people have become highly aware of the climate crisis and, even if they feel personally less vulnerable to changes, they stay committed to climate action through demonstrations, boycotts and witnessing and watching, as well as influencing through consumer choice and shareholder activism. These social movements have jointly contributed to the general outlook and preferences in lifestyles that emphasise frugality and sustainability, translating into shifts towards more sustainable mobility, housing and working.