CR_004: Technology Taxonomy Frameworks for Community-Scale Sustainability: WEF, IPCC AR6, IEA, and IRENA (Perplexity…

Summary

Comprehensive mapping of technology taxonomy logics across WEF, IPCC AR6 WG3, IEA, and IRENA. Assesses how each framework organises technologies at sector, domain, and enabling-layer levels. Key finding: all four bodies converge on treating digital/AI technologies as horizontal enabling layers — never standalone peer domains. Six physical resource domains are robustly multi-source; water, health, governance, and community economy are absent or weak in IO frameworks and require eco-village literature grounding. No IO framework addresses village/community scale as a distinct deployment tier.

Key claims

  • No IO framework provides a village-scale technology taxonomy; this creates an obligation for Neobiome to construct its own, informed by but not constrained by national-scale frameworks. CR_004
  • IPCC AR6 sector logic: Energy supply → AFOLU (food/land) → Buildings → Transport → Industry (waste/circular) → cross-cutting enabling (AI, CDR, circular economy). CR_004
  • IEA five technology families: clean electricity generation; end-use electrification; energy efficiency; low-carbon fuels; CCUS/CDR. Energy-centric; water/food/health/governance absent. CR_004
    • Correction (2026-07-17, primary read → OT_116): IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2023 contains no “technology families” grouping (“technology families”/“technology family” = 0 occurrences in the 464-pp report); it groups technologies by manufacturing archetype (mass-manufactured / large-scale site-tailored / bulk materials). The “five families” above is the IEA Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap five-pillar framing, mis-attributed to ETP-2023. The claim’s substance (IEA framing is energy-centric; water/food/health/governance absent) is unaffected; only the “ETP-2023 → 5 families” attribution is corrected. Claim + underlying_sources left as-is per annotate-don’t-rewrite. OT_116
  • IRENA Innovation Landscape organises 80+ solutions across 4 groups: enabling technologies (hardware + AI/IoT); business models; market design; system operation. Enabling technologies explicitly defined as cross-domain horizontal layer. CR_004
  • WEF governance taxonomy: AI/ML; blockchain; drones/autonomous; genomics/biotech; IoT; digital currencies. Governance-focused; physical resource domains absent. CR_004
  • AI and IoT: IPCC (Ch. 12), IEA (enabling infrastructure sub-category), IRENA (enabling technologies group), WEF (governance domain) — all treat as horizontal layer, never standalone resource domain. CR_004
  • Biotechnology: WEF governance domain; IPCC embeds in AFOLU (crop varieties, bioenergy feedstocks, soil microbiome); IEA/IRENA address only as bioenergy feedstock. CR_004
  • Advanced manufacturing: IPCC Ch. 11 (industry); IEA TCEP (industry); absent from IRENA. CR_004

Coverage comparison

DomainIPCC AR6IEAIRENAWEF
Energy
Food & Agriculture✅ (AFOLU)Partial
Water & SanitationPartial (WG2)
Buildings & ShelterPartial
Mobility & TransportPartialPartial
Waste & CircularPartial
Health technologyPartial
Governance & economyPartialPartial
AI/IoT (as layer)Partial
Biotech
Community/village scalePartialPartialPartial

Implication for EDT framework

The research supports restructuring the project’s 10 EDT domains. See edt_framework.md for decisions taken. Primary structural change: merge D05 (AI/IoT) + D08 (Satellite/Connectivity) into a single enabling meta-layer; split D02 (Food/Water/Circular) into separate domains for Food and Water; consolidate D09 (Biotech) + D10 (Advanced Manufacturing) into a single innovation frontier domain.

Connections

Links to

Sources (1): OT_116

Referenced by