The paper studies two empirical correlations: one between economic growth and environmental impacts, and the other between the lack of economic growth and unemployment. It is demonstrated that, at a global level, economic growth is strongly correlated with environmental impacts, and barriers to fast decoupling are large and numerous. On the other hand, low or negative growth is highly correlated with increasing unemployment in most market economies, and strategies to change this lead to difficult questions and tradeoffs. The coexistence of these two correlations – which have rarely been studied together in the literature on “green growth”, “degrowth” and “a-growth” – justifies ambivalence about growth. To make key environmental goals compatible with full employment, the decoupling of environmental impacts from economic output has to be accompanied by a reduction of dependence on growth. In particular, strategies to tackle unemployment without the need for growth, several of which are studied in this article, need much more attention in research and policy.
As a global agreement on climate mitigation and absolute emissions reductions remains grid-locked, this paper assesses whether the prospects for international technology cooperation in low-carbon sectors can be improved. It analyses the case of international cooperation on electric vehicle technologies to elaborate on the trade-offs that cooperation such as this inherently attempts to balance– national growth objectives of industrial and technology development versus the global goods benefit of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It focuses on bilateral German-Chinese programmes for electric vehicle development, as well as multilateral platforms on low-carbon technology cooperation related to electric vehicles. Based on insights from these cases studies, this paper ultimately provides policy recommendations to address gaps in international technology cooperation at a bilateral level for ongoing German-Chinese engagement on electric vehicles; and at a multilateral level with a focus on the emerging technology cooperation framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The authors find that from an international perspective, there is strong evidence that green investments are significantly different from SRI investments in terms of financial performance and underlying firm characteristics. Green equities outperformed SRI equities between 2003 and 2007, whereas they underperformed between 2008 and 2012 with absolute multi-factor alphas of more than 1 per cent per month in both directions. Green portfolios mainly contain stocks of low quality with weak business models that are highly capital-demanding but unprofitable, whereas SRI portfolios are principally characterized by stocks with well-conceived and profitable business models. The authors suggest that green investments can be considered as a sector bet on the renewable energy industry shaped by massive governmental subsidies during the mid-2000s.
This book is aimed at practitioners, students and scholars in architecture, urban planning and design. It features essays on ecologically sustainable cities by leading exponents of urban sustainability, case studies of the new directions low carbon cities might take and investigations of how we can mitigate urban heat stress in our cities’ microclimates. The book explores the underlying dimensions of how existing cities can be transformed into low carbon urban systems and describes the design of low carbon cities in theory and practice. It considers the connections between low carbon cities and sustainable design, social and individual values, public space, housing affordability, public transport and urban microclimates. Given the rapid urbanisation underway globally, and the need for all our cities to operate more sustainably, the book argues for the need to think about how spatial planning and design can help transform urban systems to create low carbon cities.
This report recommends actions by the public and private sectors to foster the growing market for SMEs in the clean technology sector.
Acknowledging the environmental and economic potential of green entrepreneurship, and recognizing the daunting challenges clean technology SMEs are facing, particularly in accessing early and growth stage financing, the report provides policymakers with a range of practical instruments that help support SMEs in clean technology sectors such as innovative finance, entrepreneurship and business acceleration, market development, technology development, and the legal and regulatory framework. These policy considerations are illustrated through case studies of national programs in South Korea, India, Thailand, and Ethiopia.
The report also highlights clean technology market opportunities that can have large social impact and the benefit of promoting clean technology jobs.
The emerging concept of Green Jobs has yet to be clearly defined. This study uses critical discourse analysis and framing theory to analyse the meaning of Green Jobs claims, and their representation and transformation. Based on an analysis of print media from 1999 to 2009 and supporting policy documents, five predominant frames were identified in Green Jobs discourse: Environment–Economy Bridge, Green Entrepreneurship, Nascent Industry Creation, Internal Industry Transformation, and Structural Adjustment. Coverage of Green Jobs discourse has sharply increased since 2008. Although the term remains loosely defined and is employed in multiple ways, it is predominantly used as a strategic link between the recession and climate change policy. The fractured framing used in Green Jobs discourse hinders its uptake as a meaningful concept informing job creation, greening of industry, and sustainable development policy. Media, policymakers and advocacy groups should clarify the underlying definition when using the term.
The ‘attitude–behaviour gap’ or ‘values–action gap’ is where 30% of consumers report that they are very concerned about environmental issues but they are struggling to translate this into purchases. For example, the market share for ethical foods remains at 5 per cent of sales. This paper investigates the purchasing process for green consumers in relation to consumer technology products in the UK. Data were collected from 81 self-declared green consumers through in depth interviews on recent purchases of technology products. A green consumer purchasing model and success criteria for closing the gap between green consumers' values and their behaviour are developed. The paper concludes that incentives and single issue labels (like the current energy rating label) would help consumers concentrate their limited efforts. More fundamentally, ‘being green’ needs time and space in people's lives that is not available in increasingly busy lifestyles. Implications for policy and business are proposed.
With rapid urbanization and industrialization, China is now facing a great challenge in meeting the soaring demand for new buildings and the corresponding energy consumption. Under such circumstances, the setting of a national standard on green buildings would be an effective way to respond. In fact, China has made significant progress in developing national green building standards. But such progress is not explicitly released to the international societies. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to introduce such progress. China's green building efforts are first discussed in detail with the various provisions of the national indicator system. By conducting a comparison with other countries' green building standards, a critical analysis of such a national standard is presented. The comparison indicates benefits to be gained and challenges to be met, such as lack of indicators on responding climate change, lack of region-specific indicators, lack of quantitative indicators, higher costs for receiving certification and lack of applying innovative green technologies. So, substantive revision is critically needed.
The carbon markets are in the middle of a fundamental crisis - a crisis marked by collapsing prices, fleeing actors, and ever increasing greenhouse gas levels. Yet carbon trading remains at the heart of global attempts to respond to climate change. Not only this, but markets continue to proliferate - particularly in the Global South.
The book helps to make sense of this paradox and brings two urgently needed insights to the analysis of carbon markets. First, the markets must be understood in relation to the politics involved in their development, maintenance and opposition. Second, this politics is multiform and pervasive. Implementation of new techniques and measuring tools, policy development and contestation, and the structuring context of institutional settings and macro-social forces all involve a variety of political actors and create new forms of political agency. The contributions study the total extent of the carbon markets, from their prehistory to their contemporary expansion and wider impacts.
Greening of product chains has come up as an important means to systematically improve the environmental performance of products from cradle to cradle in Europe and elsewhere. Some experience with inter-firm co-operation aiming at reducing the environmental impacts has been generated in recent years. Most of these experiences involve cooperation between some of the links in product chains, very often stopping at European borders. Problems of market communication, information availability and information costs prevent companies from going beyond these lines. Also, anonymous markets may prevent communication between producers and end-users in the West and supplying firms in developing countries. Only very few documented case studies of global greening of product chains are available. Therefore, the challenge here is how to establish interactions with the first links in supply chains. Within the context of South Africa it is of cardinal importance to identify these links to ensure sustainable synergy. European countries are constantly changing the standards of products in order to meet environmental targets.