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.