This book draws on work from across several parts of the OECD and explores policy actions for the deployment of new technologies and innovations as they emerge: investment in research and development, support for commercialisation, strengthening markets and fostering technology diffusion. Competition will be essential to bring out the best solutions.
Key findings include:
Inducing environmental innovation is a significant challenge to policy-makers. Efforts to design public policies that address these issues are motivated by the fact that innovations can allow for improved environmental quality at lower cost. However, the relationship between environmental policy and technological innovation remains an area in which empirical evidence is scant. Increased attention should be paid to the design characteristics of public policies that are likely to affect the ‘type’ of innovation induced. The work presented in this book is brought together in five substantive chapters: environmental policy design characteristics and their role in inducing innovation, the role of public policies (including multilateral agreements) in encouraging transfer of environmental technologies, followed by three ‘sectoral’ studies of innovation in alternative fuel vehicles, solid waste management and recycling, and green (sustainable) chemistry.
A rather young but rapidly accelerating biofuel industry has recently emerged in China. However, there is no legislation or policy specifically regulating biofuels or bioenergy. In addition, most of the regulatory functions are undertaken by policy initiatives rather than by law. As a result, the regulation and, in a broader context, governance of biofuels still face several major obstacles, including unclear development directions, ignored impact of biofuels development on society, environment and economy, and limited public participation. This paper argues that legislation on biofuels in the form of joint departmental rule is a departure for a comprehensive regulatory framework to overcome the current obstacles and to realize the sustainable development of the biofuels industry in China.
This article appears in the Special Issue: Green Economy and Sustainable Development.
This report on the Korean Strategy for Green Growth and its implementation in urban areas assesses the contributions of sub-national governments to Korea's National Strategy for Green Growth and identifies the main challenges for effective implementation at the local level.
Korea's economy, heavily reliant on foreign exports, was hard hit by the recent global financial crisis. Since the 1970s, Korea has become one of the most energy-intensive economies in the OECD area, thanks to higher living standards, rapid urbanisation and an expanding industrial sector. As a result, the country's greenhouse gas emissions almost doubled between 1990 and 2005, registering the highest growth rate in the OECD area. It is in this context of rapid urbanisation and unprecedented resource consumption and environmental pressures that the report focuses on the role of urban areas within Korea's National Strategy for Green Growth. The effectiveness of Korea's green growth agenda, which has been driven by a central government vision and strategy, will largely hinge on the contribution of urban areas toward more sustainable, greener growth.
Gasoline and diesel fuel are heavily taxed in many developed and some emerging and developing countries. Outside of the United States and Europe, however, there has been little attempt to quantify the external costs of vehicle use, so policymakers lack guidance on whether prevailing tax rates are economically efficient. This paper develops a general approach for estimating motor vehicle externalities, and hence corrective taxes on gasoline and diesel, based on pooling local data with extrapolations from U.S.evidence. The analysis is illustrated for the case of Chile, though it could be applied to other countries.
Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions almost doubled between 1990 and 2005, the highest growth rate in the OECD area. Korea recently set a target of reducing emissions by 30% by 2020 relative to a “business as usual” baseline, implying a 4% cut from the 2005 level. Achieving this objective in a cost-effective manner requires moving from a strategy based on voluntary commitments by firms to market-based instruments. The priority is to establish a comprehensive cap-and-trade scheme, supplemented, if necessary, by carbon taxes in areas not covered by trading. Achieving a significant cut in emissions requires a shift from energy-intensive industries to low-carbon ones. Korea is strongly committed to promoting green growth through its Five-Year Plan, which envisages spending 2% of GDP per year through 2013. One challenge is to ensure that these expenditures are efficiently targeted so as to develop green technologies, while avoiding the risks inherent in industrial policy.