article · Environment and Planning E Nature and Space
The twin green and digital transition serves as an influential policy discourse within the European Union, coupling digital technology with environmental goals. Analysis of high-level European Union policy texts and national resilience and recovery plans reveals how this coupling is legitimised despite acknowledged uncertainties and pitfalls. The surrounding political and socio-economic context plays a critical role in making this joint agenda appear desirable. Digital innovation concepts are deployed to discursively reframe existing tensions between economic expansion and environmental sustainability into mutual synergies. Institutional legitimacy rests on promises of win-win outcomes and assertions that governing bodies can steer both transitions while mitigating known hazards. In practice, this discursive logic directly shaped the distribution of recovery funding following the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting crisis recovery as an opportunity to accelerate green and digital priorities and merging environmental governance with innovation governance.
Understanding policy discourse clarifies how major public spending decisions are justified and directed. By showing how institutions present technology as a remedy for ecological and economic dilemmas, this work highlights the assumptions guiding governmental funding. Recognising these narratives helps observers evaluate whether combined digital and environmental strategies can realistically overcome long-standing trade-offs between sustainability targets and economic development.
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This paper contributes to the literature that critically engages with the so-called ‘twin green and digital transition’ by assessing the twin transition as a policy discourse. Our research question is: why and how is the twin transition legitimised and implemented in the European Union (EU) despite recognised pitfalls and uncertainties? The analysis is based on interpretative text analysis of high-level EU policy documents about the twin green and digital transition and of Member States’ resilience and recovery plans. The paper assesses the political and socio-economic context as a central factor that explains how the coupling of the green and the digital comes to be seen as desirable. Our results show that innovation associated with the digital imaginary is used to discursively reframe tensions between economic and sustainability policy aims as synergies. Legitimacy is derived not only from the promise of win-win ideas but also from the claimed ability of governing institutions to steer the twin transitions in the desired direction and avoid the recognised risks. With regard to implementation, the twin transition logic guided the allocation of funds by framing the need to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to accelerate the green and digital transitions. Hence, the digital imaginary merges environmental governance with the governance of innovation.
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DOI: 10.1177/25148486241258046
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