A look back at Ljubljana: the editorial of Prof. Christophe Ballif

Editorial for the newsletter of the University of Ljubjana, Dec 1^st 2025 at the occasion of awarding Dr. Honoris Causa to Prof. Ballif

Partnerships and communication in science in a time of disinformation

Prof. Christophe Ballif, EPFL and CSEM Switzerland

Italian renaissance writer and state-man Machiavel wrote that leaders had to project an image or “appearance of virtue”. Today, more and more leaders do not even try to give that appearance: they provide information which are completely opposite to the facts, a rhetorical figure called “anticatastase” in French (antikatastaza in Slovenian) and repeat it enough, so that people start to adhere and follow. For instance, the next American government is likely to have a large fraction of individuals denying human impact on climate change, pushing for more fuel extraction. All this is sponsored by oil, gas and coal companies which still hope to rape huge private benefits, with large means to influence social media, youth and population, while at the same time natural catastrophes are increasing, in large part du to man-induced climate change. My 15 years old son in Switzerland was surprised to see on his Tiktok almost no advertising for Kamala Harris, but a lot for her opponent.
When you work as a scientist on the topic of sustainability and energy transition you are facing a triple challenge. The first one is to have people understand the technical feasibility and the numbers. The numbers are clear: at world scale, you can come to net zero emission only with a massive development of solar and wind energy, electric mobility and e.g. heat pumps for heating, using batteries to manage the global system. To make a long story short, it is impossible to build 13000 nuclear powerplants in 25 years, but it absolutely possible to install every year 1500 GW of solar panels and 500 GW wind turbines. The second one is to convince people that the price to pay for this transition, is, not only, going down every days thanks to the huge costs decrease of the technology, but also that this price is much, much, much less than what we’ll all have to pay if continuing our fossil fuel system. Today 80% of our primary energy is still fossil. Third you have to make people understand that the little extra-mining required for the materials for the energy transition is nothing compared to the current fossil fuel industry mining, and that the CO2 emissions associated to making the assets of the energy transition (there is some), are small in comparison to the rest of our emissions. You need to emit some CO2 to stop emitting it in the long term.

Jointly with our colleague at the Electrical Engineering faculty of Ljubljana, we have been collaborating for the last 20 years at doing science, research, technology development and contributed to the industrialization of multiple technologies around solar energy and electronics, in the spirit of a collaborative Europe and we have been putting a lot of effort in communicating the facts, the science and the opportunities around these technologies, as well as its industrial perspectives. And I think that we need to communicate more. At a time where China is pouring hundreds of billions in new manufacturing facilities mostly through state-backed entities, where US has been attracting companies with a generous Inflation Reduction Act, and easy access to hundreds of billions of venture capital money, if Europe wants to avoid decline, solve the challenges of our time, and give positive perspective for the youth, it has to gather its forces, have a clear strategy of reinvestment in education, science, technology and manufacturing.

Needless to say, the role of universities is here of utmost importance, in analyzing, understanding, debating and providing guidance on the key societal topics. They need to connect to all medias, politicians of all parties, and work relentlessly to ensure that the elected leaders not only come back to an “appearance of virtue”, but feel like it is necessary to embrace virtue. Of course, a dream, but I have no doubts that all members of the University of Ljubljana, from students to faculty, can contribute a small part to it.''