Climate change challenges and state fragility in the water, energy, food/land, raw material nexus and the position of hydrogen and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage for increasing resilience

Over the last decade, Europe has experienced a sharp increase in infrastructure expenditure due to the severe and frequent natural phenomena related to climate change. Local consequences, such as habitat destruction, finite freshwater availability and food scarcity exert significant pressure on the available ecological space. Therefore, there is a growing interest in assessing risks and vulnerabilities to climate change, which has already led to a wide range of impacts on environmental systems and society, including destabilising security. Increased environmental, social, and financial damage costs are expected in the future. Many of these imminent or ongoing challenges are related to the overexploitation of resources and the energy transition, requiring a more holistic approach to encouraging new technologies, that involves a whole-of-society approach and stakeholder participation. State-of-the-art CCUS and hydrogen energy technologies, offer sustainable solutions to mitigate the current situation, allowing a reduction in carbon emissions, a transition towards a low-carbon economy, and an increased overall resilience of the international community to climate change.