Policy drivers and barriers for sustainable innovation

This project was conceived to develop our previous work on policy support for environmental innovation, funded through the ESRC’s Global Environmental Change Programme. In 2000, workshops were held with stakeholders from the business, policy making and academic communities. They led to a report1 which examined critically the case for environmental innovation policies and explored the policy instruments that might support them2, subjects of growing national and international policy and research interest3. Further work classified these instruments according to several useful categories4. The workshops and subsequent rounds of stakeholder dialogue also exposed how poor was the evidence base on which to assess the impact of policy instruments on environmental innovation. Along with some practical ‘next steps’ policy recommendations, the Report identified some areas of potentially fruitful research. The support for this current project, under the ESRC’s Sustainable Technologies Programme (STP), has enabled us to research these areas more deeply, while continuing to engage a range of stakeholders in the exchange and development of ideas on policy