Transcript Willy De Backer

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