Co-creating low-carbon futures: An open innovation roadmap for regional CO2

The research develops an open innovation roadmap which enables Latvian regions to use carbon dioxide. The research combines stakeholder collaboration with spatial analysis and performance evaluation, environmental impact assessment, and economic feasibility studies. The roadmap evaluates several pathways to convert carbon dioxide into useful products. The research combines co-creative methods with multiple approaches, which the authors describe as a “tangle of threads” to integrate academic, industrial, governmental and civil society perspectives. The process allows for ongoing feedback while developing scenarios and strategic alignment to national and European sustainability goals. The assessment of five pathways revealed algal biomass, methanol, and ethanol production as the most sustainable options for carbon conversion, location flexibility, and economic viability. The roadmap functions as a regional planning instrument and a theoretical addition to open innovation principles. The research shows how collaborative governance combined with knowledge exchange enables the transformation of emissions into entrepreneurship through innovation clusters and carbon valorisation hubs. The model provides a transferable circular economy framework which can be scaled up for other regional contexts while establishing foundations for future living labs and policy experimentation platforms.