Emerging “green” technologies Willy De Backer Europe Director Global Footprint Network A vision too far?

Emerging “green” technologies

Willy De Backer

Europe Director Global Footprint Network

A vision too far?

Global Footprint Network• Five-year old non-profit research

organisation based in California with offices in Brussels and Zürich

• Work on “ecological footprint accounts” of nations, regions, cities or businesses

23 September 2008

a

One step back: technological innovation

• Technology should be a means to an end: help achieve a high-quality life for more people on the planet

• Should be driven not just by the market but by analysis of the trends and vision of the “preferable future”

• Policy-makers should create the framework for innovation and technology development based on their view of the future

Environmental Technologies?

• All technologies should respect environment and ecological constraints or they are not sustainable

• All technological innovation should take our ecological limits into consideration

The Future

or

Trends – context and drivers

• Environmental collapse– Climate Change – Biodiversity– Over-fishing– Water scarcity– Soil erosion

Trends – context and drivers

• Energy scarcity– Supply/demand crunch (IEA) or

even peak oil, peak gas, peak coal– Shell scenarios: scramble for oil– End of cheap energy

Trends – context and drivers

• Population explosion– From 2 billion to 6 billion to 9

billion to ...?– Urbanisation : more than 50%

living in cities

Trends – context and drivers

• Economic power shift– The end of US economic

dominance?– Power to the BRICS –sovereign

wealth funds– Since 15 October 2008: the end

of “market fundamentalism”

Preferable future: “survivable development”

• Manage transition from the Age of Abundance to the Age of Sufficiency

• Accepts “Ecological Limits” to overcome “uneconomic” growth

• Learn to deal with new scarcities

The eco-industrial revolution• Respects the Planet’s ecological limits

and recognises the economy as a subsystem of the global ecology/energy system

• Redesigns its products, systems and business models copying nature’s functionalities (e.g. waste – closed loop)

Technology Policy for the eco-industrial age

• Technology and innovation will play a key role in this transformation

• Governments will have to set the framework (taxes, incentives, education) for this eco-innovation revolution

Eco-Innovation in business

• Is not: business as usual + extra product line with environmental products or services

• Is: “business as unusual” – business for a one-planet economy

Eco-Innovation at the EU• “Eco-innovation is the creation of

novel and competitively priced goods, processes, systems, and procedures designed to satisfy human needs and provide a better quality of life for everyone with a life-cycle minimal use of natural resources per unit output...”

Or in other words:• Relying on traditional “environmental

technologies” is just not enough• Adapt our economies to the carrying

capacity of our planet

Move to new level of imagination• Product innovation – electric

cars or even new transport modes

• Business Model innovation – car makers become transport service companies; utilities

Receding horizons for technology development

• New techological developments need more energy and more use of finite raw materials (cell phones)

• Higher oil price will make technology development more difficult

Preferable innovations• New metrics of sustainability –

Beyond GDP

• Cradle to cradle product design

• Decentralised, smart Energy Internet

• A new repair industry

• A global institute for the durability of consumer goods

Questionable innovations• Agrofuels• Tar sands• Hydrogen cars• Nuclear Renaissance• Carbon capture and storage• Geo-engineering to combat

climate change

Some good advice

• “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

Richard Feyman

Conclusion

• Emerging green technologies – a vision too far?

• No, a lack of vision.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Questions?

www.footprintnetwork.org

[email protected]