This book is a tourist guide to an imagined coastal city in a decarbonised Europe circa 2045. We made it in order to communicate and explore the findings of REINVENT Decarbonisation, a Horizon2020-funded project aimed at exploring the possibilities for radically reducing the carbon footprint of basic industries such as steelmaking, plastics, meat and dairy farming, and pulp and paper production.

As you will see, we went a little further, too. The Rough Planet Guide declines to answer the question of “how do we make the decarbonisation transition happen?”, in favour of the question “how
might we live in a successfully decarbonised Europe?” Thinking through the polyphony of the latter sheds new light on the former, not least because it makes it clear that there is more than one pathway to a post-fossil Europe.

This book is not a prophecy or promise, but it is a possibility. This book is not optimistic, but it is hopeful. This book is a fiction… but it is built upon the best truths we could find.