Energy shortages, the climate crisis, mountains of waste on the one hand – dwindling resources on the other, an ageing society: highly complex challenges that lie ahead of us. Research can (and must!) play its part and develop new technological approaches, for instance for a sustainable, secure energy supply or ways to a truly circular economy.

Whether society will, by and large, embrace these, is, of course, another matter. At the heart of the matter is the question: What drawbacks are we prepared to accept in order to "buy" certain advantages? Even if these are "merely" changes in our behavior or high costs, such as those admittedly incurred when cleaning the atmosphere of excess man-made CO₂ according to the new Empa initiative, Mining the Atmohsphere. After all, the latter are nothing other than our unpaid "recycling fees" when we blow CO₂ into the air while burning fossil fuels.

This discourse must include all societal stakeholders, i.e. it must be transdisciplinary, and not just take place within the scientific and technological bubble. The pandemic has clearly demonstrated this.

To find broadly acceptable solutions together requires first and foremost a trusting and open dialog. Our open day in mid-September at the new "co-operate" research campus offers an opportunity for this. The current issue of Empa Quarterly offers a first glimpse in our program. At the interface of science and the public, we are currently also engaging with our sister institutions in the ETH Domain as part of the Energy Science for Tomorrow project at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.

I would be delighted to meet one or the other of you in person at any of these occasions.

Michael Hagmann
Head of Empa communication