Imagining the Twin Transition: Digitalization, Decarbonization and Democracy

Is it possible to reconcile the quest for sustainability and the push for digitalization? Circulating through various strategies, initiatives and programmes of the European Union and the United Nations, “twin transition” refers to the possibility of aligning these two challenges currently facing governments around the world, so that they are synergistic rather than contradictory. “Twin transition” promises a pathway to a greener, smarter and brighter future in which digital tools enhance public awareness about ecological concerns, support the circular economy and facilitate co-ordination of the responses to environmental hazards (Fouquet and Hippe 2022; Meijer, 2024). However, digitalisation comes with enormous energy demands, relies on the intensive use of critical minerals and creates hazardous waste (Hedberg and Šipka 2020). It can also engender, sustain or counter power relations and socioecological inequalities (Urzedo et al. 2023). Until recently analysis of twin transition has mainly come from engineering, management, and organizational studies, but some critical social science analysis of the politics of twin transition has begun to emerge (Horn and Felt 2025; Kovacic et al. 2024; Kloppenburg et al. 2022). This paper aims to add to the literature on the politics of twin transition by considering twin transition as an imaginary, and the implications of this imaginary for democracy. An imaginary is a generative background understanding that both reflects and informs social action and interaction (Machin 2022). Approaching twin transition as an imaginary allows it to be assessed in terms of the wider social and political context that it both mirrors and conditions. I argue that in this imaginary the use of the word “twin” belies what is actually an asymmetrical and anonymous relationship, in which digitalisation operates as an apparently uniform and autonomous process that, once set in motion, can potentially secure an effective decarbonization for the future. What is therefore excluded from this imaginary is the political, cultural and material aspects of transition that inevitably complicate and condition any sort of social change. The important question this raises for democrats is whether political debate and social resistance is fully undermined by this imaginary or whether a shared vision of the future can help forge coalitions.