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projects founded

Triple T – Tackling a just Twin Transition

TRIPLE-T: Tackling a just Twin Transition, progetto PRIN-PNRR P2022B5S5J, con loghi UE NextGenerationEU, MUR, Italiadomani e Centro Fermi

TRIPLE T – Tackling a Just Twin Transition

  • Project Code: P2022B5S5J
  • Project start and end date: 30/11/2023 – 29/11/2025
  • Extension date: 28/02/2026
  • Funding source: MUR Call for Proposal n. 1409/2022 – NRRP – Next Generation EU, Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.1 – ‘Fund for the National Research Programme and Projects of Significant National Interest (PRIN)
  • CUP: F53D23010800001
  • CREF funding amount: € 165.122.00

Principal Investigator

Angelica Sbardella (CREF)

Participating research units:

Research team and staff recruited within the project

with the continuous scientific collaboration of Giovanni Dosi (Emeritus Professor)

Overall, four young researchers were recruited through the project, two in each unit.

 Results achieved

The TRIPLE T project developed an interdisciplinary research programme on the green and digital transitions, examining productive and technological capabilities, labour-market effects, territorial inequalities, and implications for industrial policy. All planned milestones and deliverables were achieved, while the project broadened the scope of its original scientific agenda. It generated 25 outputs, including published articles and working papers under review in international peer-reviewed journals, with findings on economic complexity, green specialisation, occupational exposure to artificial intelligence and robotic technologies, toxic pollution and vulnerable and leftbehind places, global value chains, hydrogen, and critical raw materials. The project also produced original datasets and indicators, made openly accessible through a public platform, strengthening transparency and research reproducibility. Four early-career researchers were recruited and advanced training activities were organised, including two editions of the Economic Fitness and Complexity Summer School. With the support of the Civic Action Network and the International Collaboration Network, results were disseminated through project workshops, numerous national and international conferences and seminars, and public-engagement initiatives, including radio programmes, podcasts, festivals, newspaper articles, and meetings with institutional and civilsociety actors.

Scientific publications

Published papers 

  1. Aufiero, S., De Marzo, G., Sbardella, A., and Zaccaria, A. (2024). Mapping job fitness and skill coherence into wages: an economic complexity analysis. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 11752.
  2. Benachenhou, D., Cader, M., Mazzilli, D., and Tacchella, A. (2025). Beyond arbitrage: machine learning for financing impactful economic activity. AI and Ethics, 1-11.
  3. – Bez, C., and Virgillito, M. E. (2024). Toxic pollution and labour markets: uncovering Europe’s left-behind places. Review of Regional Research, 44, 337-381.
  4. Caldarola, B., Mazzilli, D., Napolitano, L., Patelli, A., and Sbardella, A. (2024). Economic complexity and the sustainability transition: A review of data, methods, and literature. Journal of Physics: Complexity, 5(2).
  5. Cresti, L., Mazzilli, D., Patelli, A., Sbardella, A. and Tacchella, A. (2026). Vulnerabilities and capabilities of the European automotive industry: Economic Complexity meets Input-Output analysis. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics.
  6. de Cunzo, F., Consoli, D., Perruchas, F., and Sbardella, A. (2025). Mapping critical raw materials in green technologies. Industry and Innovation, 1-34.
  7. Dosi, G., Cresti, L., Riccio, F., and Virgillito, M. E. (2025). Industrial policies for global commons: why it is time to think of the ghetto rather than of the moon. Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 52, 845-866.
  8. Dosi, G., Riccio, F., and Virgillito, M. E. (2025). Decarbonisation and specialisation downgrading: The double harm of GVC integration. World Development, 194, 107047.
  9. Dosi, G., Riccio, F. and Virgillito, M.E. (2026). The uneven geography of emissions in European value chains: a subnational analysis of carbon elites-ghettos. Journal of Economic Geography, p.lbag033.
  10. Dosi, G., Riccio, F. and Virgillito, M.E. (2026). The environmental smile curve: input-output evidence on the pollution haven hypothesis. World Development, 206, p.107411.
  11. Fenoaltea, E.M., Mazzilli, D., Patelli, A., Sbardella, A., Tacchella, A., Zaccaria, A., Trombetti, M. and Pietronero, L. (2026). Follow the money: A startup-based measure of AI exposure across occupations, industries, and regions. PNAS nexus, 5(6), p.pgag185.
  12. Neffke, F., Sbardella, A., Schetter, U., and Tacchella, A. (2026). Economic complexity analysis. In R. M. del Rio-Chanona, M. Pangallo, J. Bednar, E. D. Beinhocker, J. Kaszowska-Mojsa, F. Lafond, P. Mealy, A. Pichler, and J. D. Farmer (eds.), The Economy as an Evolving Complex System IV. Santa Fe: SFI Press.
  13. Nelli, L., Virgillito, M. E., and Vivarelli, M. (2026). A twin transition or a flagship policy? Emergent constellations and dominant blocks in green and digital technologies. Energy Policy, 209, 114954.
  14. Rughi, T., Staccioli, J., and Virgillito, M. E. (2025). Labour-saving heuristics in green patents: a natural language processing analysis. Ecological Economics, 230, 108497.

Working papers

  1. Caldarola, B., Mazzilli, D., Patelli, A. and Sbardella, A. (2024). Structural Change, Employment, and Inequality in Europe: An Economic Complexity Approach. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.07906.
  2. de Cunzo, F., Patelli, A., Sbardella, A., and Tacchella, A. (2025). The Functional Role of Critical Raw Materials in Technological Innovation (No. 2516). Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography.
  3. Fessina, M., Tacchella, A., and Zaccaria, A. (2025). Product-level value chains from firm data: mapping trophic levels into economic growth. arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.01133.
  4. Negro, B., Dosi, G., and Virgillito, M. E. (2024). The hydrogen paradigms: technologies, country patterns of specialisation and dependence.             Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies.
  5. Tacchella, A., Marschinski, R., and Albora, G. (2026). Linking green innovation and environmental policy: mapping pollution control technologies with large language models. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5807662.
  6. Negro, B., and Virgillito, M. E. (2025). More Hype than Hope. Hydrogen Policy, Projects and Environmental Conflicts. LEM Working Paper Series, 2025/28.

Organized events or conference participation

PROJECT EVENTS ORGANISED

  • 2 February 2024 – Kick-off Meeting, Enrico Fermi Research Center, Rome.
  • 23 April 2024 – “Capabilities, GVCs and productive complexity: Comparing frameworks to explore the green transition and supply chain vulnerability”, CREF, Rome, co-organised with IRPET.
  • 14-15 November 2024 – “Inequalities and Technical Change, Labour Markets, and Decarbonization Paths:
  • Results from PRIN Projects”, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa.
  • 5 February 2026 – “Analyses, contradictions, and policy pathways for a just transition: evidence and perspectives from the PRIN project TRIPLE T”, CREF, Rome.

CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS – CREF

  • September 2024 – AISRe XLV Annual Scientific Conference, “Cities and Regions in the Digital Era and the Challenge of the Transition Towards the Circular Economy”, Turin (two CREF presentations reported in the final report).
  • September 2024 – CCS 2024 – Conference on Complex Systems, Exeter.
  • October 2024 – RSA-SIE 2024 / 65th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Italian Economic Association, Urbino. – May 2025 – RSA Annual Conference 2025, “Navigating Regional Transformation”, Porto (two CREF presentations reported in the final report).
  • June 2025 – 33rd GERPISA International Colloquium, Tongji University, Shanghai.
  • July 2025 – StatPhys29, Florence.
  • September 2025 – AISRe XLVI Annual Scientific Conference, “Territorial Inequalities: Prospects for Regions and Cities”, Pescara (two CREF presentations reported in the final report).
  • September 2025 – CONCORDi 2025 – 10th European Conference on Corporate R&D and Innovation, JRC, Seville.
  • January 2026 – 8th Geography of Innovation Conference, Budapest.

CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS – SSSA

  • October 2023 – 64th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Italian Economic Association, L’Aquila.
  • June 2024 – 20th Biennial Conference of the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society, “Transformation: Creative Accumulation and Creative Destruction in the Economy”, Gothenburg.
  • October 2024 – 65th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Italian Economic Association, Urbino.
  • November 2024 – 14th Journée Thématique FAERE, “Environment, Policies, and Risks: eterogeneities in Climate Change and Sustainability”, Paris.
  • June 2025 – 18th Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics and 11th International Degrowth Conference, Oslo.

INVITED TALKS AND SEMINARS – CREF

  • June 2024 – Francesco de Cunzo, EU-IOSAC Inaugural Workshop “Global Value Chains in Europe”, Luiss Institute for European Analysis and Policy, Rome.
  • May 2025 – Francesco de Cunzo, Annual Conference, Department of Earth System Science and Environmental Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Ancona.
  • December 2025 – Francesco de Cunzo, workshop “Green Specialization and Circularity in the Age of Critical Raw Materials”, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan.
  • December 2023 – Angelica Sbardella, UNU-MERIT Research Seminars, Maastricht.
  • May 2024 – Angelica Sbardella, Autonomy Institute Seminar Series, London.
  • July 2024 – Angelica Sbardella, Bonn AI Climate Expert Meeting, Bonn.
  • October 2024 – Angelica Sbardella, Joint Research Centre – European Commission Seminar Series, Seville.
  • January 2025 – Angelica Sbardella, keynote lecture, Winter Workshop on Complex Systems, Bergamo. – March 2025 – Angelica Sbardella, seminar, Programme for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
  • July 2025 – Angelica Sbardella, seminar, Peking University, Department of Engineering, Beijing.
  • November 2025 – Angelica Sbardella, seminar, University of Palermo, Department of Economics and Statistics, Palermo.
  • February 2024 – Andrea Tacchella, workshop “Economic and Financial Networks: Reconstruction, Resilience and Recovery”, IMT Lucca.
  • May 2024 – Andrea Tacchella, Complexity Economics Seminar Series, Oxford INET.
  • July 2024 – Andrea Tacchella, UN Climate Change Conference, Bonn.
  • September 2024 – Andrea Tacchella, “Physics in the AI Era”, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.
  • November 2024 – Andrea Tacchella, workshop “Green and Digital Transformations: Skills, Jobs and Policy”, University of Ferrara.

INVITED TALKS AND SEMINARS – SSSA

  • EPOG-JM Erasmus Mundus Joint Master (online) – Maria Enrica Virgillito, lecture “The political economy of the decarbonization transition”.
  • March 2025 – Maria Enrica Virgillito, International Seminar Series, Faculty of Economics and Finance, University of Córdoba, Argentina.
  • July 2025 – Beatrice Negro, symposium “Fossil Fuel at the Climate Crossroads”, Barcelona, side event of “Green Colonialism and Green Sacrifice

TRAINING AND SUMMER SCHOOLS

  • July 2024 – participation in the seasonal school “Econometrics meets Natural Language Processing: from Topic Analysis to Large Language Models”, Perugia.
  • March 2025 – participation in the “Advanced Training on Large Language Models” course at CREF, delivered by Pi School.
  • July 2024 – 3rd Economic Fitness and Complexity Summer School, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, organised with UNU-MERIT, UNU-CRIS and YSI/INET.
  • June 2025 – 4th Economic Fitness and Complexity Summer School, CREF, Rome, organised with UNU-MERIT, UNU-CRIS and YSI/INET. https://efc-school.cref.it/home

Posters, dissemination materials, other outputs

https://efc-school.cref.it/home

DISSEMINATION AND PUBLIC-ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

  • March 2024 – Maria Enrica Virgillito and Angelica Sbardella on Radio Popolare, programme “Il giusto clima”, in a segment devoted to climate justice.
  • January 2025 – Angelica Sbardella and Maria Enrica Virgillito, e-book and podcast series “Le parole per il cambiamento”, contribution “Innovazione verde e giustizia sociale”.
  • June 2025 – Maria Enrica Virgillito, “Towards a Just Transition: A Compass for Financial Operators”, Forum for Sustainable Finance, Sustainable Finance Forum, Milan.
  • 13 September 2025 – organised session “I territori dell’abbandono: Quando l’unica speranza resta la transizione ecologica, giusta e radicale”, Festival del Pensare Contemporaneo, Piacenza, with Beatrice Negro, Angelica Sbardella and Maria Enrica Virgillito.
  • 28 October 2025 – Francesco de Cunzo and Angelica Sbardella, newspaper article “Terre rare e riarmo così l’UE tradisce la sostenibilità”, Domani.
  • December 2025 – Angelica Sbardella, online presentation of the book “Clima ingiusto. Il welfare per un patto eco-sociale” by Giovanni Carrosio and Vittorio Cogliati Dezza (Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità).
  • January 2026 – Maria Enrica Virgillito, seminar “La sfida del welfare energetico climatico”, Rome, organised by Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità and Fondazione Basso.

OTHER DISSEMINATION OUTPUTS

  • Open-access EFC Data platform: https://efcdata.cref.it/ – harmonised patent and employment datasets and productive, green/non-green technological and employment fitness indicators.
  • Continuous updates on project activities and results through CREF and SSSA institutional and social-media channels and through the Civic Action Network and International Collaboration Network.

Project website or dedicated webpage 

https://triplet.cref.it/

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