[IN PRINCIPLE, THIS CAN BE DEVELOPED EITHER AS A THESIS OR A DISSERTATION]

Net-zero is “a roadmap or long-term investment plan to reach carbon neutrality of a specific country or region”. As “agents of change”, projects have a central role in the net-zero transition. Several and radically different projects must be planned and delivered to achieve the net-zero target.

If net zero transition needs “tangible” projects which create or change physical assets, such as building wind farms or green buildings, on the other hand, “intangible” projects are in the same way essential. Intangible projects for net-zero transition are necessary to change how physical assets (responsible for GHG emission) are operated or used. To do so, intangible projects aim to chain people’s beliefs, behaviours, and lifestyles. Awareness campaigns on sensitising people to reduce meat consumption or to use public transport or bicycles instead of cars are all examples of intangible projects for net-zero (other categories might exist, it is part of the dissertation to find out).

Finally, intangible projects are unique in the panorama of net-zero projects since they allow to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors and have a great carbon emission reduction potential (Newell et al., 2021).

Relevant literature about net zero stress the importance of intangible projects:

– Reducing travel and travel mode-switching (Bristow et al., 2008)

– Food-related GHG emissions and individual diets individual (Garvey et al., 2021)

– Energy consumption (Batalla-Bejerano et al., 2020)

Nonetheless, the net-zero literature does not have a project studies perspective. In the same way, project studies do not present intangible projects for net-zero relevant studies.

Therefore, there are several gaps in knowledge. For instance:

• A classification of these projects is missing
• We do not know how these projects are financed or managed
• We do not know which the criteria to determine the project’s success
• We do not know who are the owners or the sponsors of these projects

To conclude, this thesis/dissertation will address some of the following research questions(other research questions will be developed during the thesis/dissertation) :

• Which are examples of meaningful intangible projects?
• How can intangible projects be classified?
• How is it structured the governance of these projects?
• Which are the degree of success of these projects?