Developing Socio-Technology Scenarios for the Realization of a Carbon-Neutral Society

In order to achieve a carbon-neutral (CN) society, a Japanese high-tech electronics manufacturing company conducted foresight. As the initial step, a workshop was organized with approximately 20 corporate researchers and two academic researchers, utilizing diverse societal change scenarios created through the horizon scanning method, extending up to the year 2050. The outcome of this effort resulted in the formulation of six hypotheses regarding changes in the Japanese societal environment by around 2050, along with six future issues set towards those changes. By synthesizing these, over 30 technological scenario ideas were generated. For the second step, these ideas were clustered to create 4–5 socio-technology scenarios, and a mapping of academic research that could serve as the background technology for these scenarios was carried out. Looking ahead, as a future research task, it's essential to consider how to communicate these outcomes with various stakeholders.