Environmental Innovation and Ecodesign

Certainties and Controversies

Romain Debref

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786302380
• eBook ISBN: 9781119544067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The end of the post-war economic boom was marked by the recognition of the environmental problem with the oil crises of the 1970s and, in 1972, the first major UN conference devoted to the human environment. Successive international meetings have resulted in a context where technical change, innovation and industry have assumed a central place in the creation of a new model of society.

Against this consensus, the author demonstrates from economic analysis and wide-ranging examples that the environmental innovation doctrine and ecodesign methods remain fragile and can lead to paradoxical results.

1
Environmental Innovation: A Controversial Doctrine

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the concept of environmental innovation. It therefore has two objectives. It aims, on the one hand, to present what can be designated as a doctrine, that is, elements of knowledge related to environmental innovation which, as demonstrated by part of the academic literature dedicated to this and a good number of deciding factors, now appear to be stabilized. This chapter intends, on the other hand, to question this doctrine by showing that, for all the points dealt with, many questions remain unanswered. This doctrine is based on three main elements – definition, typology and determining factors – which will be treated successively in this chapter in three sections.

In the first section, therefore, we will consider the definition of environmental innovation. The questions underlying this development will be to know whether it is possible to distinguish a generic innovation from an environmental innovation. We will thus return to the origins of this notion, its diffusion and the discussions around it within economic theory at the start of the 1970s up to the present. While the debate surrounding the first report of the Club of Rome (1972) partly relates to the perspectives created by technical progress – economists from the University of Sussex, involved in this controversy, play a crucial role in this theorization of environmental innovation – a settled definition would have to wait until the end of the 1990s and the start of the 2000s. However, questions remain with respect to what constitutes an environmental innovation. The judgment that can be made about this is effectively and necessarily ex post.

To extend this thought process, we will look at the typology of environmental innovations in the second section. As is the case with generic innovations, a distinction is usually made between environmental innovations as a function of the degree of change that they bring about. The first form of innovation is incremental and is mainly based on “end-of-pipe” technologies. The second form of innovation is known as “radical”, because “clean” technologies review what already exists by proposing a preventive approach. A third form of innovation is known as “systemic”, which is illustrated in the circular economy approach with its flow loops of energy and materials. We will add a fourth form of innovation, complementary to the three previous, based on the notion of eco-efficiency. Its problem is perhaps just another way to designate increases in productivity, susceptible to lose all environmental specificity.

A third and last section will focus on the drivers of environmental innovation. What is it that promotes or slows down the emergence of environmental innovations and their technological clusters? The successive phases of prosperity and economic crisis represent, in theory, an essential point in understanding the appearance of innovations, even those which are environmental, as much on a macro-economic level as within companies. However, in a context where practices in certain sectors should be more respectful of the environment, the dominant designs in place can no longer exclusively arise from an economic process. This is why the theory of transition management presents itself as equipping public policies and thus facilitating the transition process. In essence, doctrine (found among evolutionist economists as much as among ecological economists) today identifies a trio of consumer-driven incentives for the socio-technical regime in place and for public policies pertaining to innovation and the environment. Authors agree to acknowledge the specificity of environmental was innovation in the latter, which echoes the now-famous “Porter hypothesis” relating to the opportunities for competition that the environmental constraint would provide. Without removing all meaning from environmental policies, we can, however, note that in a situation characterized by what Godard [GOD 93] called a “controversial universe”; it is in fact the state of technology that is likely to determine what the environmental problem is. Such causality, such as the presence of rebound effects, disturbs the meaning of the concept of environmental innovation.

1.1. Progressive conceptualization of “environmental innovation”: a journey back through 40 years of controversies

This section is dedicated to tracking the progressive conceptualization of the notion of environmental innovation. Taking this into account, we have tried to divide debates pertaining to understanding of this special reality that is environmental innovation into time periods, from the beginning of the 1970s up to the present. The decade of the 1970s is the one which highlights contemporary recognition of the environmental problem. From the outset, as evidenced by the controversy surrounding the first report of the Club of Rome (1972), the role of technology in the interaction between societies and the environment was central to the discussion (see section 1.1.1). The pessimism of some opposed the optimism of others, a division which persisted in the decade of the 1980s, notably by means of what is known today as “rebound effects”. However, beyond macrosocial thinking, in which mythology resonates (see the recurrent invocation of Prometheus) and which also marked this era, innovation which is more respectful of the environment was also characterized by the approaches of engineers who wanted to be more pragmatic (see section 1.1.2). In the 1990s, which now subscribed to the sustainable development perspective, significant schools of thought (Neo-Schumpeterian, ecological economics, etc.) took hold of this problem of environmental innovation. This decade is also marked by the appearance of articles by Porter and van der Linde [POR 95a, POR 95b], which, according to the “Porter hypothesis”, provided what still constitutes today one of the main elements of the doctrine relating to environmental innovation (see section 1.1.3). During the 2000s, theorization efforts continued and the need for a summary arose. Thus, a number of authors (Rennings, Kemp, Van den Bergh) sought to assemble all the work carried out in a single doctrine, one part of which is found in the very definition of environmental innovation itself. The 2010s bore witness to standardization of the concept of environmental innovation, evidenced by the indicators and databases amassed by large international public institutions and the creation of specialized academic journals (e.g. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions). However, at the same time questions and doubts remain from an academic point of view about the meaning and applicability of this notion (see section 1.1.4).

1.1.1. Environmental concerns and innovations: the first proposals of economic theory during the 1970s

1.1.1.1. “Generic” innovation, creative destruction and the economic crisis

The neoclassical school of thought has for a long time considered technological progress and innovation as elements which are exogenous to the economy and to growth [GUE 12, p. 421]. The function of neoclassical production is considered as a group of given optimal technical possibilities, within which the producer selects the best technical combinations as a function of the prices of inputs and outputs. The choice of these optimal technological possibilities depends above all on maximizing profit according to “perfect competition” conditions. Amendola and Gaffard [AME 88] justifiably criticized this approach which focuses on “the effects of the change on the relevant magnitudes of the economy (productivity, employment, etc.) from the comparison of the feature of its productive structure before and after the change” [AME 88, p. 1], and insists on the fact that “the point arrival of the process of change – that is, on the configuration of the productive capacity if the economy (of the firm) that results from the adoption of a given technological advance and is uniquely determined by the characteristics of the latter” [AME 88, p. 1]. We thus envisage technological progress as an automatic update of the optimal technological possibilities, but nothing had yet been said about the process of creation, selection and optimization of these techniques.

However, in his book Industry and Trade, Marshall [MAR 19] already upheld that technologies have endogenous characteristics and that technological change is conditioned by institutions and socio-economic contexts. It is no surprise that these characteristics were of particular interest to Schumpeter at the beginning of the 20th Century. He identifies an entrepreneur¹ as someone who combines technologies in such a way as to generate profit. This profit exists thanks...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Environmental Innovation: A Controversial Doctrine
• 2 Ecodesign and Technological Change: A Missed Opportunity?
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement