Why technical solutions alone fail climate goals

The innovation fallacy: Overestimating your ability to disrupt the system. Here is the famous energy scientist Vaclav Smil to tell you what that means for technology and sustainability: "(...) of course, they just march along with the new tech crowd whose naivete compares every technical change to recent developments in electronics, and above all to mobile phones. Here is how a green energy CEO put it in 2020: 'Do you remember how we transformed telephony from fixed-line phones to mobile phones, television from watching whatever was on TV to whatever we fancied, from buying newspapers to customising our news feeds? The people-led, tech-powered energy revolution is going to be just the same' How could changing a device (landline to mobile) whose reliable use depends on a massive, complex, and highly reliable system of electricity generation (dominated by thousands of large fossil-fueled, hydro, and nuclear power plants), transformation and transmission (encompassing hundreds of thousands of kilometers of national and even continental-scale grids) be the same as changing the entire underlying system?" - Page 199 in Vaclav Smil's book, How The World Really Works. What that means for sustainability practitioners in business: → Appreciate the difference between innovation on the device level and system level. → Understand that disruption requires both innovation (adding new) and exnovation (removing old). → There is no empirical evidence that technology alone can deliver reductions fast enough and sufficiently (See "Decoupling Debunked" by The European Environmental Bureau, 2019). → Betting on technology alone to create sufficient change is hoping for a miracle. And hope is not a strategy. → Explore post growth strategies in parallel with technology-based strategies - explore exnovation as well as innovation.

Some people are putting way too much faith in technology to solve the climate crisis. Techno-utopianism—the belief that technology will save us—sounds appealing. Carbon capture, AI-driven solutions, renewable innovations... it’s easy to get caught up in the hype. But here’s the thing: technology alone isn’t going to cut it. 🙅🏼♀️ Sure, tech can be a powerful tool. It can help us be more efficient, scale solutions, and even tackle some of our biggest challenges. But relying on it to solve systemic issues lets companies off the hook. Worse, it allows business as usual to carry on under the guise of “innovation.” Take carbon capture, for example. It’s promising, but treating it as a silver bullet risks distracting us from reducing emissions in the first place. What we really need is a combination of: 🧩 Systemic change to how businesses operate within planetary boundaries. 🧩 Behavioral shifts that reduce overproduction and overconsumption. 🧩 Policy frameworks that hold companies accountable for real progress. Technology is a tool, not a solution. It can support change—but it can’t replace the hard, messy work of rethinking business models and resetting priorities. #Sustainability #ClimateAction #TechnoUtopianism #SystemicChange

Why technical solutions are not always the answer to sustainability. Technology is sexy. It is shiny, innovative, and promises to save the world. But here’s the uncomfortable truth. Technical solutions alone won’t solve our sustainability challenges. Why? Because sustainability is not just a technical problem. It is a human problem. We love to throw money at AI, carbon capture, or the latest renewable energy breakthrough. And yes, these tools matter. But they are just tools. Without addressing the root causes, our behaviours, systems, and cultures, we are putting a band-aid on a broken leg. Think about it: - You can design the most energy-efficient building in the world, but if people leave the lights on 24/7, what’s the point? - You can create a circular economy model, but if consumers still demand cheap, disposable goods, will it scale? - You can develop a machine that sucks carbon emissions out of the air, but if we keep burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow, are we really winning? Sustainability requires more than innovation. It requires behavioural change, cultural change, and systemic change. The hard part? Change is messy. It is uncomfortable. It does not fit neatly into a quarterly earnings report. But it is the only way forward. So, before you invest in the next big tech solution, ask yourself: - Are we solving the symptom or the cause? - Are we enabling better habits or just better gadgets? - Are we designing for people or just for profit?

“The most common mistake leaders make in the face of adaptive challenges, like the climate crisis, is treating them as if they were purely technical problems to solve. The winner of the recent US election is unfortunately a prime example of this misstep—denying the deeper, systemic changes needed and focusing only on short-term fixes. To truly address the climate crisis and make the right choices for the future, we need more than just technical solutions. We need inner development—strengthening our capacity to navigate uncertainty, make difficult decisions, and act with resilience and long-term vision. Only through this growth, both individually and collectively, will we find the wisdom and agency to face the challenges ahead.” Jan Artem Henriksson - Executive Director of Inner Development Goals Foundation https://lnkd.in/gdEi2KPd Jamie Bristow Elise Buckle

Any work on polycrisis, climate change, existential threat etc, has to have integrated into its strategy, approach, and theory of change -- *relational* work. Meaning, we need to skill up to "guide" versus "drive" change, and bring people together into containers that enable safe interactions, learning and activating. This is skill building, essential baseline foundations for any practitioner I know in the sustainability, climate and energy space. We cannot address complex human challenges with a technical mindset (only). We can, however, step into an integrative mindset. If you are a leader of a team, initiative, workstream, foundation, project, or program -- you can take on this role of integration. Start with asking: Are we treating this as a technical challenge, or an *adaptive one? Then, ask your team. *Adaptive = taken from adaptive leadership: a complex problem that doesn't have a clear solution and requires new ways of thinking and working. Adaptive challenges are often unexpected, and they can arise in crises. They require shifts in hearts and minds.