It was the winter of 2015, while pursuing a Master's degree in Energy and Environmental Management and Economics, that a turning point for global climate action entered the world stage: for the first time, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) became part of the global agenda. What fascinated me then, and has stayed with me ever since, was a question no textbook quite answered: if governments set the targets and corporations deploy the capital, where does the individual fit in?

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Individual choices still matter

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To understand why individuals matter, it helps to first understand where they are absent. Nationally Determined Contributions are the national climate plans through which countries commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate impacts. Once emission targets are established, governments translate them into action through concrete instruments: binding regulations, carbon pricing, subsidies for emerging technologies, and sector-specific policy packages. These are the tools through which states operationalize their climate pledges.

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Yet they share a common blind spot: they operate at society-wide level, adjusting prices, standards, redirecting investment. None of them acts directly on individual choice, and yet individual choice is precisely where so much of the story unfolds.

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People become invisible in the NDC framework. The shift to a sustainable future is consistently framed as a story of technological progress and economic viability, not of human behaviour. Individuals appear only as a downstream effect, through taxes, energy bills, or costs passed along supply chains. But what if our daily decisions were not a footnote, but a meaningful part of the outcome?

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Thirty passengers. One hundred-eighty seats. One question.

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A few months ago, I flew for work between two European capitals, a two-hour journey on a Wednesday morning. On the 8 a.m. service, one of three scheduled that day, there were roughly 30 passengers on a 180-seat aircraft. I was one of them, and I had not given it a second thought.

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Yet the energy consumed per passenger on a near-empty plane is dramatically higher than on a full one. The question surfaced quietly but clearly: was that trip genuinely justified? And if there had been only one flight that day instead of three, would it really have derailed my work or would I simply have planned around it? Almost certainly the latter.

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This is not an isolated case. Emissions are woven into nearly every aspect of our lives: what we buy, what we eat, how we travel, what we consume. Our behaviours shape energy demand in ways no policy instrument fully captures. The answer is not to retreat from modern life, but to build a more conscious relationship with the energy we use.

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Growth and responsibility are not opposites, but they do require us to resist the quiet temptation of becoming, quite simply, spoiled by energy. That question, whether a choice was genuinely justified, is one we rarely stop to ask. Asking it honestly, and acting on the answer, is precisely the kind of courage the transition requires of us.

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Two scales, one transition

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Responsibility for the transition is structural: it sits with governments, regulators, and institutions. But it is also, inescapably, personal. And crucially, these two dimensions are not independent. Individual choices shape the environment in which policy is formed: policy in turn shapes the conditions under which individuals choose. Each scale feeds the other.

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We must resist the temptation of sheltering behind the supply side, or placing all accountability at the door of corporations and governments. Turning the lens on ourselves is not comfortable. It means accepting that we are not only beneficiaries of the transition, but agents of it.

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The transition requires courage at every level. And each of us must be willing to look honestly at the part we play, not through grand gestures, but through honest reckonings, repeated daily. The transition will move at the speed that each of us decides to give it.

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Vittoria Camodeca

Head of Commercial Negotiations, Eni CCUS Holding Ltd

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