Keywords

This book contains insights garnered from a workshop held in October 2022 at Royaumont Abbey near Paris, a place that by its own existence demonstrates how sustainable change in response to the manifold twists and turns in human history is possible. The aim of the workshop was to explore how climate change as one of today’s grand challenges interacts with another longstanding challenge, that of benefiting from new technologies while keeping their risks at bay through risk and safety management. Climate change obviously is closely intertwined with the use of technologies as they have evolved over time, from burning coal to nuclear energy, from the first car engines to aviation. Climate change not only results from using these new technologies, but also induces new threats to using technology safely, as discussed under the rubric of Natech, referring to natural hazards’ potential to cause industrial accidents (Krausmann et al. 2011). The reciprocal relationship between high-risk industries and climate change has been captured by the concept of double materiality (Adams et al. 2021; Gourdel et al. 2021). Aviation or oil and gas are two emblematic industrial domains whose very existence is challenged in a context of climate urgency (see the flight shaming movement for example), while nuclear power production is revitalized as a “green” technology (Tillement and Garcias 2021; Verma 2021).

All actors, including high-risk industries, are urged to reduce their contribution to climate change, imposing new challenges to organizations in which safety has a certain importance and level of priority. In this push for transformation driven by the need for sustainability, what is at stake for safety (Blokland and Reniers 2020)? Some tentative connections have been discussed, for instance regarding food safety (Pires et al. 2020), workers’ safety, especially in relation to heat stress (Dasgupta et al. 2021; Kjellstrom et al. 2016; Schulte and Chun 2009; Schulte et al. 2016), safety of infrastructures (Nasr et al. 2021) and public safety (Stroebe et al. 2021). Yet, it seems that only a small part of the interplay has been explored despite their coexistence at all levels (users, operators, organizations, industry, governance) in practice.

In a broader perspective, considering societal subsystems such as energy, transportation, agriculture, industry or health systems, sustainable transformation is a huge challenge that policymakers and civil society must address to prevent climate collapse. As some authors have already noted, more academic attention is needed regarding the safety implications of disruptive, sustainability-driven changes in socio-technical systems (Iakovleva et al. 2021; Kivimaa et al. 2021). In this context, safety issues can be considered as both side effects (e.g., the volatility of renewable energy sources or chemicals used for plant-based nutrition) and important facilitating conditions (e.g., users’ safety expectations regarding existing technologies or strong actors/institutions that provide safety standards for new products and infrastructures). Consequently, transforming complex socio-technical systems requires not only the dismantlement of prevalent system structures and the achievement of a stable future state, but also managing the process of establishing new practices in a safe and reliable manner without interrupting important systemic functions and services.

In the chapters to follow, some of these challenges are addressed with a theoretical, methodological or case study-based empirical lens. The first two chapters by Jean-Christophe Le Coze and Julien Etienne discuss the relationship between climate change and safety management from a theoretical perspective. Le Coze argues that climate change should not be considered in isolation but in relation to other changes, especially globalization and digitalization of industrial workflows, as they conjointly affect and are affected by concerns related to the safety of high-risk industries. He proposes the concept of Post Normal Accident as an analytical lens to conceptualize interactions at different scales from local to global, stressing that tight coupling of systems and complex interactions between components of systems need to be considered not only within organizations, but across organizations and institutions as they act in increasingly dense and entangled networks. In a similar vein, Etienne asks whether and how industrial safety research will be able to inform the socio-technical adaptations needed to accommodate threats to safety stemming from extreme weather events and global warming. Critical infrastructures will have to be made “climate-proof”, but this may entail fundamental trade-offs between technical, economic, political and social objectives. Adaptation limits have to be acknowledged and illusions of control dismantled in the hope of finding new tools to address the monumental challenges ahead.

Alena Bleicher and Johannes Weyer propose methodologies that can help to handle the complexities involved in understanding and shaping the interactions between industrial safety and climate change. Using the example of geothermal energy, Bleicher suggests that real-world experimentation may be a way forward to continuously gather, reflect and revise knowledge on the effects of technological, organizational, economic and political transformations in order to guide future action. Small-scale, controlled experimentation outside scientific laboratories can be understood both as an analytical lens and as a design principle. Central characteristics of such experimentation are derived. Weyer discusses agent-based modeling (ABM) as another methodological approach to comprehending the dynamics of complex socio-technical systems. ABM can serve to evaluate the effectiveness of different policy measures aimed at enhancing safety or promoting sustainability (or both). A simulation framework based on analytical sociology is presented which focuses on people’s everyday practices, bounded-rational decision-making and governance concerns. Examples are provided for how ABM helps to understand individuals’ reactions to policy interventions in the realms of personal mobility and energy supply.

In the final section of the book, three case studies are presented to illuminate the particulars in the relationship between climate change and industrial safety management. Ole Andreas Engen and Claudia Morsut address how public authorities understand climate risks and their consequences in the context of the petroleum industry in Norway. Their case study focuses on Stavanger as it is experiencing socio-economic transformations of its main industry, consisting of the redesigning of prevalent system structures and the rebranding of the Municipality from oil to energy capital. This approach is sustained by the introduction of new practices, complying with climate change considerations, without interrupting important systemic functions and services. Tom Postmes, Nienke Busscher, Sanne Hupkes, Agustín De Julio and Ena Vojvodic present a case study of the Groningen gas field. They investigate the role of science and knowledge in the assessment, monitoring and management of escalating earthquake risks associated with gas extraction. The lessons from this case are relevant for renewable energy initiatives such as hydrogen storage and geothermal energy. Gas extraction itself will also continue, despite the International Energy Agency’s conclusion that no new fields should be developed to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Natural gas may be the best of the worst during the energy transition: gas-fueled power plants have lower emissions and combine well with renewables. Lastly, Stéphanie Tillement discusses French nuclear infrastructure as another case for how economics, politics and technical and environmental contingencies interact and affect safety and climate goals. Climate goals as well as energy security have motivated the urgent call for increased nuclear production capacity in France. Meanwhile, recent incidents have highlighted (unsuspected) fragilities in existing facilities, and development efforts for new facilities have been largely unsuccessful. Ways out of the current dilemma focused on accommodating short-term stability needs and long-term development of the industry are discussed.

In the concluding chapter, some broader insights are discussed and steps proposed to more fully consider the interplay of climate change and safety management in research, industrial practice and policymaking.