Measures and instruments of sectoral economic and innovation policies

Sustained rises in energy, commodity and environmental costs are to be expected over the coming years. In order to counter those trends, the development and spread of ecologically sustainable technologies for future application needs to be supported. Politically, that objective in turn demands a closer intermeshing of environmental policy on the one hand and economic and innovation policies on the other.

In order to make use of experiences gathered in both the aforementioned policy areas for the benefit of environmental policy, this project studied internationally successful sectoral economic and innovation policies. Examples studied were the ICT sector in Ireland and Finland, the biotechnology sector in the USA and the rail transport industry (development of the Shinkansen) in Japan. The aim of the project was to enable the experience gathered in those countries with measures to promote the sectors mentioned to be utilised in order to shape an ecologically sustainable industrial policy in Germany. Accordingly, successful instruments on both the demand and supply side were investigated, such as the promotion of clustering or contracting models in implementing energy modernisation of buildings, and possible strategies for their application on the German market were considered.