Blog

This blog is the 6th in the SIP blog series; a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. Decarbonisation is no longer about compliance or reputation. It is about staying in business and gaining a future competitive advantage. This is n

Welcome to the Climatetech SuperCluster on 19th March with some notes – 'from smart cities to wise'...   Figure 1: ‘not in the algorithm’   If human interaction is about zero… As a kid in the 1960s I got the bus to school, and soon got to know everyone at the bus stop – now everyone is on their feeds and apps, and human interaction is about zero… So does smart city tech point towards a city of strangers controlled by distant overlords – or – a city of local synergy and cohes

The world shrugged its shoulders. The Paris Agreement 1.5C target is unattainable; 2C unlikely.  “Overshoot” is here. But the world carries on, enduring more frequent extreme weather events, gradually incurring more costs and losing more lives. Financiers factor in extra costs into their modelling and change nothing. Only crises galvanise people into action. And there are plenty of prospective tipping points that could do that – when it will be too late to respond. Economic m

This blog is the fifth in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. The majority of net zero and decarbonisation strategies fail not because the goal is incorrect but rather because the approach is insufficient.

Last year when we reviewed the 2025 WEF Global Risk Report , Donald Trump had recently taken office and we were all wondering what came next. Last year, the 10-year view was dominated by environmental risks. Extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth systems and natural resources shortages led the 10-year risk rankings. This year’s report has the same top three long-term risks, but misinformation and adverse outcomes of AI have

This blog is the fourth in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. In the first blogs in this series, we made the case that decarbonisation has firmly entered the realpolitik sphere, surviving not because it is

This blog is the third in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. In the first two blogs, we argued that net zero has been absorbed into realpolitik and defence strategy. Climate action survives because it now

Baroness Hallett has recently published two reports ( Vol 1 and Vol 2 ) on emergency decision-making across the four UK governments during the Covid-19 pandemic. This follows on from Module 1 which we reported on in two previous posts ( UK Covid-19 Inquiry – Report on Module 1 and UK Covid-19 Inquiry – Report on Module 1 ). Her report highlights the need for multiple scenario planning: which should be up-to-date and adaptable. In this blog, we describe the reports outcomes

This blog is the second in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. In the first blog in this series about our Sustainable Innovation Pathways (SIP) initiative, we argued that net zero has moved from being an e

This blog is the first in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. It has become fashionable to say that climate has “slipped down the agenda”. The headlines are about war in Europe and the Middle East, defence

We recently reviewed the ESPAS (European Strategy and Policy Analysis System) Horizon Scanning report, Issue 7 f rom March this year. Issue 8 from July adopts the same approach of looking at 14 or 15 signals of change and focussing on three of them to describe in detail using Futures Wheels: Military-grade society Digital tech giants become state actors Green hype bust.   Military grade society  means advanced security protecting Critical National Infrastructure from both at

We recently reviewed the EC Strategic Foresight Report , entitled Resilience 2.0, but ESPAS (the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System) also produces frequent Horizon Scanning reports. Their most recent reports from 2025 (Issues 7 and 8 – earlier Issues do not appear to be easily accessible) identify 14 or 15 signals of change. In each they have focussed on describing the details of three of them. They seem to have deliberately looked for “weak signals”, some very unce