Overshooting planetary boundaries has profoundly altered the balance of the Earth system (Richardson et al., 2023). As a result, the habitable conditions of the planet are under threat, to the point where certain areas of the world are becoming uninhabitable. In this context, there is a need for transdisciplinary research that brings together stakeholders from civil society, engineering, natural and social sciences. We believe that this academic method will allow the identification of multiple leverage points, as defined by (Abson et al. 2017), and thus provide actionable research results. This interdisciplinarity of scientists obliges researchers to be epistemologically agile and methodologically grounded to ensure the rigour of the knowledge produced (Haider et al. 2018). This is a real challenge for researchers, as interdisciplinarity requires more time to build a common vocabulary among researchers and poses a risk to the disciplinary structure of science. Thus, it is clear that sustainability science challenges the status quo and addresses multi-level issues. Thus, ESSLab+ is not about designing new technologies to solve environmental problems, but about better understanding the paradigms behind current and new technologies, stepping back from regular production and exploring new socio-technical paradigms.
