For more than 30 years policies aimed to develop renewable energy, substitute green technologies, decouple carbon from the economy and drive sustainable growth through innovation. Since the Paris Agreement, the 2 oC global warming target is looking more like a dangerous failure limit compounded by ocean acidification and biodiversity collapse. Governments are increasing support for growth of renewable energies development but not the massive transformation of grid infrastructure, markets and demand flexibility needed to downshift dependence on gas. The hydrogen and CCS energy transition solutions are much touted but forever too costly and impractical. Then, 2023 saw many European countries become less ambitious about their ‘race to net-zero’ in transport, buildings, and manufacturing, citing the cost-of-living crisis. In difficult times people cling to what they know, become fearful of change and distrustful of institutions. The unfolding environmental disaster cascade has brought the truth of the downshift of fossil fuel into the light. We often look to policies and economics when we hope for action. But the fact is that all the things that must change to downshift fossil fuel and grow regenerative industries are engineered systems and artifacts. It seems that when we look at downshifting fossil fuels and other unsustainable economic activities, we run into wicked problems.

This workshop spends exactly 5 minutes on the problems - recasting the problems into engineering requirements to downshift unsustainable fossil fuel. Then we spend 10 minutes presenting the rationale for emergence of corrective transdisciplines via case study involving boilers. We know that engineered systems can be changed. Corrective transdisciplines deliver preventative changes while providing social and environmental benefits. Corrective transdisciplines grow out of the incumbent engineering disciplines without political or economic direction, and their inventions and standards change the future for the better. We will take a few minutes to make the case that the next corrective transdiscipline to deal with the carbon catastrophe is Transition Engineering. We will describe briefly the workflow of Transition Engineering. Then we will describe the key tools and work shop use of the Wicked Problem Investigation on the biggest problem we can think of – Oil.

We hope the workshop will illustrate how Transition Engineering projects establish trust, build capacity and create value through the correction of accumulated locked-in unsustainable design.

Professor Susan Krumdieck teaches and researches in the field of energy transition engineering and specialises in turning crises into opportunities. Susan’s work on transition engineering grew out of sustainability and energy engineering interests in University of Colorado at Boulder and University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She is co-founder and trustee of the Global Association for Transition Engineering. Susan is Chair in Energy Transition Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, where she is research director of the Islands Centre for Net Zero and the founder of the International Transition Labs Network.