Albert Faber, Annemarth Idenburg, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP-RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Barriers and opportunities to transitions in current and planned environmental and innovation policies (assigned to theme
Evolutionary economic theory offers clear insights into the mechanisms that underly innovations, structural changes and transitions. It is therefore of great value for the framing of policies aimed at environmental innovations and transitions to a sustainable development. Evolutionary concepts are of great value to assess and understand processes of change in economic structure, technological development and institutions. The main concepts that come foreward in evolutionary theory are: diversity, innovation, selection, bounded rationality, path dependency and lock-in, and coevolution. These concepts can also be used to formulate guidelines for the role of the government and the design of public policies. Our paper offers an evaluation of current Dutch policies for energy technologies, against the background of the evolutionary concepts. This evaluation includes not only an overview of Dutch energy policy, but also several related policy fields, such as on innovation, technology and environment. We conclude that Dutch energy innovation policies do take note of several of the evolutionary concepts, especially in the wake of the recent policies for system innovation. This goes mainly for measures that do not contradict or deny traditional efficiency oriented policies. Evolutionary concepts that seemingly conflict a traditional goal oriented approach, on the other hand, are still rarely incorporated in Dutch energy innovation policies. In order to incorporate the core concepts of evolutionary economics, governmental technology policies should focus more on diversity of technologies, strategies and businesses, rather than on the support of specific technologies. This implies for the policy maker to focus his strategic innovation policies on processes rather than on the process outcomes.
 | Conference organized through conf-vienna
(copyright Gunther Maier) |