Ensuring environmental sustainability of emerging technologies
Photo from Unsplash by Matthew Brindle.
Phase 2 of IRGC’s ESET (Ensuring environmental sustainability of emerging technologies) project: IRGC just published a series of papers written by experts in various fields who describe what is being done in their domain towards ensuring the environmental sustainability of emerging technology outcomes.
In 2022, IRGC and invited authors produced papers about specific emerging technologies where risks to environmental sustainability may manifest when those technologies reach deployment, and about instruments or approaches that could be relevant across all domains to identify, assess and manage those risks.
Technologies and their possible applications
- Risk governance of emerging technologies: Learning from the past (Rainer Sachs)
- Gene drives. Gene drives: Environmental impacts, sustainability, and governance (Jennifer Kuzma, North Carolina University)
- Chemicals. Smart materials and safe and sustainable-by-design — a feasibility and policy analysis (Steffen Hanssen and Freja Paulsen, Danish Technical University, and Xenia Trier, University of Copenhagen)
- Using bio-based residues. Ensuring the environmental sustainability of emerging technologies applications using bio-based residues (Christian Moretti, ETH Zurich)
- Electric batteries. Lithium-ion batteries for energy and mobility: Ensuring the environmental sustainability of current plans (Andrea Vezzini and Priscilla Caliandro, Bern University of Applied Sciences)
- Space technologies. Ensuring the environmental sustainability of emerging space technologies (Romain Buchs, ClearSpace)
- Carbon dioxide removal. Ensuring the environmental sustainability of emerging technologies for carbon dioxide removal (Benjamin Sovacool and Chad M. Baum, Aarhus University)
- Cultured meat.Is cultured meat environmentally sustainable? (Christian Schwab and Marine Boursier, EPFL)
Approaches for ensuring that outcomes are environmentally sustainable
- Ex-ante life cycle assessment. Practical solutions for ex-ante LCA illustrated by emerging PV technologies (Stefano Cucurachi and Carlos Felipe Blanco, Leiden University)
- Anticipatory life cycle assessment. Anticipatory life cycle assessment for environmental innovation (Thomas P. Seager, Arizona State University)
- Liability systems. Liability’s role in managing potential risks of environmental impacts of emerging technologies (Lucas Bergkamp, Interlex)
- Ensuring environmental sustainability of emerging technologies — the case for applying the IRGC emerging and systemic risk governance guidelines (Rainer Sachs)
The goal pursued with these papers is to examine what could be done in order to prevent emerging technologies from causing unwanted adverse environmental consequences later in their deployment.