No green growth without innovation. Bruegel Policy Brief 2009/07, November 2009

Abstract

The 'green growth' debate is taking place in an oversimplified setting, largely disregarding the innovation factor. Technologies to mitigate climate change are being treated as given, or as emerging spontaneously, ignoring the fact that the portfolio of technologies available tomorrow depends on what is done today. This can easily lead to a misguided preference, either for subsidising the use of relatively inefficient technologies or for postponing action to later in the hope that new technologies will become available which will reduce the cost of fighting climate change. But the radical new emissions-free 'backstop technologies' we will need are not yet available, or else still far from the market. To foster their emergence the 'green innovation machine' must be turned on.