Jun 2010: Nominate “radical and systemic eco-innovation” examples for OECD project

Dear WRF 2011 stakeholders,

The OECD is undertaking a project on Green Growth and Eco-innovation that aims to better understand how innovation can result in new, effective solutions to global challenges and to provide industry with tools and examples to improve their contributions to sustainable development.

 

If countries are to tackle climate change and other environmental challenges, they will need to engage in not only incremental improvement but also a broad range of eco-innovations in the medium to long term. As part of this project, the OECD therefore is collecting interesting examples of “radical and systemic eco-innovation” in the business sector, with the aim to identify factors and policies that can support and facilitate the longer-term changes necessary to achieve green growth.

 

The OECD project and the forthcoming WRF 2011 share the common needs to showcase how resource efficiency can be more radically improved to enable decoupling and how the transitional paths towards a resource-efficient economy can be developed. We therefore would like to invite you to the nomination of eco-innovation examples with which you think interesting and promising by filling in the template which can be downloaded at here in English and send it to: ecoi...@oecd.org.

 

Based on the nominations received, the OECD Secretariat will select interesting examples and conduct in-depth study on their innovation processes jointly with experts nominated by participating governments. The results will primarily feed the forthcoming OECD Green Growth Strategy to be launched in mid-2011 but also could be shared with the WRF 2011 audience.

 

Radical or systemic eco-innovations may be simple but with a very wide range of applications, or may be highly complex involving many actors and a range of technological and non-technological changes in organisational and institutional arrangements. The boundary between incremental and radical or systemic eco-innovations is not necessarily clear-cut but examples of radical or systemic eco-innovations could include one or more of the following characteristics:

  • Alternative solution: Innovation which comprises the introduction of alternative or entirely new solutions to existing products, processes, marketing methods or organisational structures that may significantly reduce environmental impacts.
     
  • Significant environmental improvement: Innovation which is or has the potential to contribute to a significant reduction in overall environmental impacts.
     
  • Significant economic impact: Innovation which has or could bring substantial economic gains, competitiveness, market acceptance and/or job creation as well as environmental improvements.
     
  • Wider application: Innovation which involves the introduction of products, processes or new solutions at a wider scale to reduce environmental impacts such as a new transport system, a district energy system or eco-towns.
     
  • New business models: Innovation which involves a radically different business model from the conventional ways of providing products and services, with the potential to significantly improve environmental sustainability.

Win-win innovations that combine improvements in environmental performance with opportunities for economic benefit are of particular interest, as these are of particular importance for green growth.

 

More detailed explanation on this project and the criteria for nomination is provided in this document.

 

We would appreciate your nomination by 30 June, 2010 but later submissions would also be welcome.

 

You are also welcome to forward this request to your colleagues and other experts as far as you can. Experts are also invited to participate in a OECD member-only community website which allows an exchange of information and views with other experts. Please e-mail to ecoi...@oecd.org if you would like to join this interactive website.

 

Thank you very much for your attention and we very much look forward to your kind contribution to this important work.

 

Yours sincerely,

Tomoo Machiba, Senior Policy Analyst OECD
Dr. Martin Birtel, Project Manager World Resources Forum

 

 

Contact details:

Tomoo Machiba (Mr)
Senior Policy Analyst (Project Manager, Green Growth & Eco-innovation)
Structural Policy Division (SPD)
OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry (DSTI) 2
rue André-Pascal 75775
Paris CEDEX 16 France
Phone : +33 (0) 1 45 24 99 84 (direct) Fax : +33 (0) 1 44 30 62 57
tomo...@oecd.org
www.oecd.org/sti/innovation/sustainablemanufacturing

 

Dr. Martin Birtel
Project Manager World Resources Forum
Empa
Technology and Society Lab
Lerchenfeldstr. 5
CH-9014 St. Gallen
Phone: +41 71 274 78 48
E-Mail: w...@empa.ch
www.worldresourcesforum.org