Green and digital transformation are two important processes implemented and planned for the coming years by European policy. In simplified terms, the goal of the green transformation is to transition to an environmentally neutral economy by 2050, while the goal of the digital transformation is to use data technologies, especially artificial intelligence, to ensure that this transition maintains the competitiveness of the European economy.
These goals necessarily presuppose a high level of adaptability and innovation among economic actors, as well as among employees who will be the carriers of these changes. These competencies will shape most of the careers of those already employed today and almost the entire careers of those currently being educated.
However, the path toward these goals does not seem to be as smooth as desired. It appears that the crisis in the European automotive industry will affect most strongly those who have invested the most in the green transition, particularly electric vehicles (RTV Slovenija, 2023). Difficulties may also arise from the lack of cooperation in the transport sector, which lags significantly behind other sectors in achieving climate targets (Clean Energy Wire, 2023).
Floods, heatwaves, and mild winters are a reality—in short, climate change is happening, and it would be irrational to deny it. The ability to adapt to these changes is a fundamental sustainability competence. Adaptation is encouraged both by regulation and by data on the damage caused by such unpredictable events. As an example of adaptation, we can mention frost events: insurance companies no longer insure against frost damage because in recent years frost is no longer an uncertain event but an annual occurrence. Agriculture will need to adapt by changing crop types.
For individuals, the regulatory framework supporting the green transition is represented by the GreenComp competence framework, the European sustainability competence framework (Bianchi et al., 2022), while the regulatory support for the digital transformation is represented by the DigComp 2.2 framework, the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (Carretero et al., 2022). These frameworks present the perspective of experts and policymakers on what individuals need to know in order to participate in the green and digital transformation. For companies, the framework is even more complex. In 2023, the regulatory framework for implementing digital transformation was completed with the CSRD directive on sustainability reporting (European Commission, 2023), and in 2024, based on this directive, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards were adopted (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, 2024). These require the gradual introduction of more than one thousand data points in the reporting of large public-interest companies, and part of the indicators also addresses their suppliers. In Slovenia, this includes several hundred companies, which together with their suppliers account for 60% of GDP.
A key novelty introduced by the CSRD directive for companies is the auditability and traceability of documentation for the data reported in sustainability reports. While until recently the emphasis was primarily on the communicative content of reports and possibly their promotional value for customers and partners, CSRD introduces audit of reports and verifiability of claims. The data-driven and narrative dimensions of the dual green-digital transition thus become inseparably intertwined, and regulation will move from a phase of encouraging early adopters to change behaviour toward mandatory behavioural changes across the entire economy. These changes will not be allowed to be merely cosmetic, as was shown in the infamous Dieselgate case (European Parliament, 2019), but will need to ensure that epistemically designed behavioural changes are also realised in ontology. It will not be enough to have a good strategy—a mathematical model—of how a company’s business processes will become environmentally neutral. It will also be necessary to demonstrate, with an audit trail, how measured figures correspond to planned targets.
One of the major challenges of environmental neutrality is construction. In the production of conventional Portland cement, almost the same mass of carbon dioxide is released during the calcination of limestone and clay as the final mass of the product itself. During a visit to the Laboratory for Building Materials at TUM Munich, they experiment with different clays, limestones, and other materials. They have achieved a mixture with half the emissions that, under selected conditions, reaches the same concrete strength results as Portland cement. Once industrial production of this mixture is developed in a partner company and certified for use in concrete plants, it will become the best available technology. Regulation on the use of best available techniques (European Commission, 2021) will ensure that its use under selected conditions replaces the otherwise cheaper and universally applicable but environmentally significantly more risky Portland cement. Mathematically, this is a multi-criteria optimisation problem that, in addition to environmental impact, also considers structural quality and economic feasibility, opening opportunities for new business niches. However, the key is that all stakeholders understand and perform their role in the process. Professor Thienel, who proudly presented his achievements, spoke only briefly about regulation and other epistemological elements of the green transformation: he simply does what he enjoys most. In a laboratory designed as a real cement plant with a concrete facility, he develops cement mixtures that produce the strongest possible concrete with the lowest possible greenhouse gas emissions. His students learn this technology during their studies and transfer it to their workplaces, thereby increasing their employers’ competitiveness in combination with BAT regulation.
Another of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is clean water (United Nations, n.d.). At the Department for Urban Water Management and Waste Technologies at the same university, an interesting combination of green and digital transformation was demonstrated: two containers housing a wastewater treatment system equipped with extensive digital sensor technology, purifying all wastewater from the university campus. Sensors are used to measure water quality parameters, actuators dose reagents to improve water quality, and a digital twin of the entire process models the relationship between raw water quality parameters, reagent dosing, and other process parameters on the control side, as well as the measured parameters of the treated water at the output of the system. The partner company that developed the technological components has access to data and models through these projects. Students are trained as part of regular coursework in operating modern treatment plants, and through the digital twin they learn about future technological developments, transferring this knowledge into industry.
While the above two examples illustrate an idealised transfer of knowledge from laboratory to practice, it is also worth mentioning a less optimal sustainability case. Recently, Talum from Kidričevo stopped producing primary aluminium, despite the fact that the carbon footprint of its production was several times lower than that of competing primary aluminium from Asian countries. Unstable electricity prices in the previous year made production economically uncompetitive, even though the design of process optimisation that reduced emissions made sense under assumed price conditions. This example can be seen as a warning that process optimisation can push systems from a comfort zone toward the limits of feasibility, requiring either higher data quality and forecast stability or greater risk resilience. Good digital process models can anticipate such risks and include them in decision analyses.
How, then, can we summarise the presented challenges and examples of the European dual green and digital transition? First, it is important to recognise that there are no universal recipes for these challenges, and each company—and likely each individual—will need to find their own path. The consequences of strategic decisions along this path are unpredictable. To some extent, advanced data analytics applied to sufficiently large datasets can provide interval estimates of risk, but a significant reliance will still be placed on the intuition of company leadership, collaboration across supply chains, and also on policy and regulation, which must create conditions in which promising solutions receive appropriate support and recognition. At the same time, the green and digital transformation represents an opportunity for young people: with the awareness that no real-world problem is as simple as exam tasks, they can engage with challenges that will shape the coming decades of their careers and prepare for issues that even employers are only beginning to anticipate.
In September and October, DataBitLab is organising several activities related to raising awareness of the risks of the green and digital transformation. Therefore, we have prepared a promotional 15% discount for our customers, applicable when ordering our services in our online store. The discount can be activated using the promotional code “DataBitLab: responsible digital transformation”.
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