The challenges of the EU Twin transitions: socio-economic and geopolitical context

In the EU regulatory and policy agendas, digitalisation and decarbonisation are seen as ‘twin transitions’. Twin not only in the sense that are occurring at the same time, but also advocating for an integration of the two: digitalisation for decarbonisation and decarbonisation of digitalisation. Indeed, digitalisation possesses a Janus-faced role vis-à-vis the green transition: it can be difficult to achieve efficient decarbonisation without the help of digital technologies, but digital technologies do have environmental implications and their increasingly massive use amplifies energy consumption and has an impact on the exploitation of natural resources. For this reason, it also assumed that the EU commitment to achieve no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 should pursue economic growth with a sustainable use of resources.