Overview This Z-Lab is for students who want to use the energy transition as a rare space for strategic exploration: to look beyond technologies and markets, investigate questions that professional practice often leaves unasked, and imagine how power, value and access could be transformed. Module Introduction — Z-Lab Energy Transition The Z-Lab Energy Transition does not start from a case to solve or a project to execute. It is a strategic design laboratory that helps students question the current energy system, imagine alternative economic configurations, and design transformative devices — such as services, contracts, platforms, governance models or financial mechanisms — capable of shifting relationships, incentives, responsibilities and value flows. The energy transition is not only about replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources. It also concerns how energy is produced, owned, distributed, priced and governed; who benefits, who pays, who can participate, who remains vulnerable, and which territories are enabled or left behind. These configurations are the result of historical, political, economic, technological and infrastructural choices. They shape inequalities, dependencies and conditions of energy poverty. The course starts from the current system and its trajectory. Students will analyse its actors, rules, infrastructures, incentives, value flows and tensions, while exploring the external forces that may reshape it: technological, climate, social, economic and regulatory change. The aim is not to predict the future, but to understand how different conditions may affect the system and where strategic opportunities may emerge. Futures and foresight provide the strategic framework for this exploration. Economic sci-fi, worldbuilding and speculative design then allow students to go deeper into reality by constructing plausible future worlds in which the current system can be tested under different conditions. These worlds make visible the structures, assumptions and consequences of the system: what it rewards, what it excludes, which dependencies it creates, and which alternatives it makes difficult to imagine. Within these worlds, students will develop prototypical and diegetic devices that act as strategic probes. They will test how a different energy economy could work, what conditions it would require, which actors would need to be involved, and where intervention in the present may become possible. By the end of the course, each student will develop a recognisable individual project, even when connected to the work of others.The final output will not be only a creative prototype, but a strategic device: a way to make a different energy economy tangible and then return from that future to the present, clarifying what new spaces for action, alliances and interventions become visible today.

By the end of the Z-Lab, students will be able to: -Diagnose the strategic architecture of an energy system, identifying the actors, rules, infrastructures, incentives, value flows, dependencies and exclusions that determine how the system operates and reproduces itself. -Reconstruct the trajectory of the system, understanding how historical, political, economic, technological and infrastructural choices have shaped its current configuration and what this configuration is structurally designed to enable, reward, protect or marginalise. -Identify the strategic tensions embedded in the energy transition, including conflicts between decarbonisation and justice, efficiency and participation, innovation and exclusion, security and autonomy, centralisation and distributed agency. -Assess how external forces may alter the system’s trajectory, using futures and foresight to explore how technological, climate, social, economic, geopolitical and regulatory change may reinforce, disrupt or redirect existing dynamics. -Formulate a strategic hypothesis for transformation, identifying where ecosystem-level intervention could shift relationships, incentives, responsibilities, access, governance or value distribution. -Use future worlds as strategic testing environments, constructing plausible scenarios through worldbuilding and economic sci-fi to examine how different conditions of scarcity, abundance, power, ownership, vulnerability or regulation could affect the system. -Design prototypical and diegetic devices as transformation levers, such as services, contracts, platforms, governance models, protocols or financial mechanisms that make an alternative energy economy tangible and testable. -Evaluate the strategic implications of the device, clarifying which actors would need to be involved, which alliances or enabling conditions would be required, which risks or trade-offs may emerge, and which forms of value or power would be redistributed. -Return from the future to the present with an actionable strategic reading, identifying what the speculative exploration reveals about current blind spots, possible intervention spaces and the student’s own contribution to transforming the system.

Main Objective The main objective of the Z-Lab Energy Transition is to train students to read and transform complex systems, using the energy transition as a concrete field of inquiry. Students will learn to analyse how a system is organised — its actors, rules, infrastructures, incentives, value flows, dependencies, conflicts and exclusions — and how its trajectory may be shaped by external forces. The course supports students in moving from systemic analysis to strategic intervention: identifying tensions, signals of change, leverage points and transformative opportunities. It also trains them to design devices — such as services, contracts, platforms, governance models, protocols or financial mechanisms — as instruments capable of shifting relationships, responsibilities, access, incentives and value distribution within a changing context.

Materials will be provided during the course. They may include academic articles, reports, case studies, policy documents, regulatory materials, foresight toolkits and references on socio-technical transitions, energy communities, energy justice, data governance, commons, design fiction and economic speculative design.

The Z-Lab combines short lectures, guided discussions, collective reflection, small-group work and individual project development. Each session introduces a specific step of the process and translates it into an applied activity supported by designed tools and visual templates. Students will work in small groups to analyse the system, discuss signals of change, explore future implications, develop scenarios and test emerging ideas. This collaborative work is intended to enrich the process, expose students to different perspectives and build shared intelligence around the energy transition. The activities will be supported by structured canvases and collaborative boards, delivered through digital environments such as Miro or Mural. These tools will support system mapping, Causal Layered Analysis, horizon scanning, scenario implications, Three Horizons, worldbuilding and the design of prototypical/diegetic devices. They are not only facilitation supports, but learning infrastructures that help students make complex systems visible and progressively build their reasoning. Although several activities will be collective, each student will develop an individual final project. The aim is to ensure that every participant identifies a personal strategic space of action and translates it into a recognisable speculative device connected to the broader work of the group.

Attending Students (attendance ≥ 70% recorded via BEACON) Continuous Assessment – 1/3 of the final grade: group presentations held during the semester. Final Exam – 2/3 of the final grade: Individual oral exam in the exam sessions scheduled at the end of the semester. In subsequent exam sessions (retakes), the grade is based exclusively on the individual oral exam (100%). Non-Attending Students Final Exam – 100% of the final grade: Individual oral exam starting from the exam sessions scheduled at the end of the semester. ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Group presentations are evaluated on the basis of: clarity of delivery, command of the subject matter, quality of analysis, and ability to respond to questions. The oral exam assesses critical understanding of the topics covered in the course.

No specific formal criteria will be used. The instructors will guide students in connecting these interests with their academic path and with possible future directions in their professional, entrepreneurial, civic or social-impact work.