AbstractsPhysics

Linkages between environmental innovation and policy measures in the EU15:

by K. Laparidou




Institution: Delft University of Technology
Department:
Year: 2009
Keywords: environmental innovation; policy clusters; renewable energy technologies; energy efficiency technologies
Record ID: 1253086
Full text PDF: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a973dcc6-5cb6-469b-9e3d-280272b9b81d


Abstract

In March 2007, the European Commission presented the “Renewable Energy Roadmap”, a document establishing a binding target for all European Union’s Member States to increase their renewable energy consumption rates from sources such as wind, solar, hydro or biomass. The overall value (for all EU Members) was set at 20 percent and should be reached by the year 2020. The renewable energy production was introduced in the energy production sector just after the energy crises of the 1970s as private attempts of few countries to deal with prospective energy security issues. In addition, renewable energy technologies contributed in pollution abatement, which has been a challenging issue for the European Commission ever since, due to their non-depletable nature and the decreased amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the ones produced by fossil fuels. In December 2008 the European Union adopted the proposal of the Commission (2008), which stated each Member country’s target share of renewable energy consumption, calculated on the basis of per capita gross domestic product. The Directive included in-between targets (such as 25 percent of the overall target between 2011 and 2012) but no binding constraints on their implementation. Besides the increase of the Renewables share, another solution which has been proposed by the European Commission has been the concept of “energy efficiency”. This idea is defined as decreasing the energy consumption by 20% by the year 2020. In contrast to the renewable concept, energy efficiency has been implemented following regulations suggested by the European Commission. The general policy instruments which have been used remain the same with those of Renewables but they have been more clearly defined for all sectors (households, industries, transports and services). Despite the fact that the Renewables have proceeded as a concept, energy efficiency has been adopted widely and faster. These two trends have been the most representative concerning the energy changes which the European Union started promoting the last decades. Their effect is multi-oriented: prevention from energy depletion and dependence on foreign countries and pollution abatement, according to the directions of the Kyoto protocol. The success of the implementation of environmental friendly technologies has been related to the technological change in the energy field. Many researchers tried to connect environmental innovation with various characteristics, such as R&D expenditures or policy instruments, in order to suggest effective means for their promotion. Characteristic researches have been these of Popp (2005) with “lessons” over environmental innovation and connection of innovation to energy prices, Brunnermeier and Cohen (2003) who modeled, for the US industrial sector, the determinants of environmental innovation, Vries and Withagen (2005) who connected environmental innovation to stringency policies and Johnstone et al. (2008) who modelled the environmental innovation determinants and specified their research…