Against the backdrop of a looming global environmental crisis, a sustainable energy transition driven by public and private finance and technological innovation paves the way for the emergence of novel technologies, industries, value chains, consumption patterns, etc., under a techno-economic paradigm that promises to lead to a ‘great surge of development’ decoupled from environmental harm. The diffusion and adoption of this new paradigm, however, is too sluggish to avert ecological collapse, uncertain in view of geopolitical conflict and the impending energy crises, and highly uneven in time and space due to core-periphery disparities. In Europe, this paradigm shift creates opportunities but also major challenges for peripheral countries, underscoring the need for more assertive industrial strategies.
A dominant policy and theoretical current, embodied in the European Union’s Green Deal and related strategic frameworks, advances the paradigm of ‘green growth’—the conviction that economic growth can be rendered compatible with environmental sustainability through technological innovation, structural transformation, and coordinated public action. It conceives the transition to renewable energy and resource-efficient production not as a constraint on prosperity but as the foundation of a new techno-economic paradigm capable of reconciling growth with ecological balance. In practice, however, the EU’s green growth agenda remains strongly market-driven, relying heavily on price signals, private investment, and competitive allocation mechanisms, which results in a transition that is too slow, prone to stop-start dynamics, often ineffective, and unevenly concentrated in space. Within this paradigm, state intervention is constrained by competition rules, fiscal limits, and an implicit reliance on markets as the primary drivers of the transition.
An antithetical current, rooted in ecological economics and political ecology, under the rubric of ‘degrowth’, contends that green growth is illusory, and that genuine sustainability presupposes the deliberate contraction of economic activity. It posits that technological progress and efficiency gains are inherently incapable of decoupling production from environmental degradation at the scale required to avert ecological collapse. It advocates a managed reduction of output, a reorganisation of production systems, and a cultural shift towards sufficiency and moderated consumption. This current stands in opposition to the premise that technological innovation and economic expansion can be reconciled with environmental sustainability.
This project investigates, from a theoretical, empirical and normative perspective, Europe’s energy transition dynamics, their institutional, technological and economic determinants, their potential economic and environmental impacts, and the policies needed to avert ecological overshoot. It combines Schumpeterian, post-Keynesian and ecological economic theories within a systemic research programme, and develops a dynamic model of an economy embedded in the environment and undergoing energy transition. At the empirical level, it simulates alternative transition scenarios, including those of green growth and degrowth. At the normative level, it frames the EU and national policy discourses on the European Industrial Strategy, Recovery Plan and Green Deal with robust insights on industrial policy.
The project advances the ongoing debate between the green growth and degrowth paradigms by examining their theoretical premises and empirical validity in the context of Europe’s energy transition. It explores alternative realistic pathways to economic growth that remain within ecological limits, assessing whether technological change and policy intervention can achieve decoupling without precipitating ecological overshoot. In doing so, it provides valuable insights for policy design, clarifying the conditions under which industrial policy can reconcile development objectives with environmental sustainability. It highlights the limits of market-driven green growth and the impasse of degrowth, and concludes that only a coherent green industrial policy—whereby the State assumes an entrepreneurial and directive role, steering strategic public investment, mission-oriented planning, and targeted support for peripheral regions—can reconcile development objectives with environmental sustainability across Europe.
The project was designed to boost the researcher’s career evolution and to consolidate his expertise and research skills through high-quality training.
