Digitalization as a driver of transformative environmental innovation

• Examine digitalization as a key driver of transformative environmental innovation. • Study it as a ubiquitous unfolding and as a place-based socio-material phenomenon. • Analyse how it reconstitutes sectors by necessitating cross-sectoral coordination. • EIST scholars must engage with modalities and impact spectrum of digitalization. • An explicit focus on digitalization is needed to inform just low-carbon transitions. This viewpoint argues for an explicit focus on digitalization as a key driver of transformative environmental change and innovation in the next decade. We hold that digitalization is more than a landscape concern. Our piece suggests three elements of a critical approach to digitalization: to examine its ubiquitous unfolding, to study it as a real socio-material phenomenon ‘on the ground’, and to analyse how it enables new forms of coordination across sectors. We conclude that EIST scholars must engage critically with the proliferation of digitalization in most or all societal sectors, and with how this sets directions for low-carbon transitions.