The European Innovation Platform for Eco-innovation (Eco-innovation–IP)

Submitted by Administrator on 5 March, 2010 - 13:19

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Rationale

Our present life-style and the fast growing demand in countries such as China and India increase the pressure on natural resources and the environment. Even in the short to medium term this may have negative effects felt by everybody, as demonstrated by the effects of climate change and by the rising prices of natural resources. Consumption and production patterns need to change fundamentally to decouple economic growth from environmental pollution and the depletion of resources. This can only be achieved through eco-innovation, i.e., any form of innovation aiming at significant and demonstrable progress toward s the goal of sustainable development. The objective must be to reduce the impact of economic growth and economic development on the environment by achieving a more efficient and responsible use of natural resources, including energy.

The importance of eco-innovation for the competitiveness of the EU economy and the creation of jobs and wealth is meanwhile widely recognised and emphasised in the renewed Lisbon Strategy, the Environmental Technologies Action Plan (ETAP) and the Lead Market Initiative (LMI). According to reports, the global market for environmental technology and services is forecasted to grow up to 30% by 2010, which represents a huge economic and innovation potential. While high costs of innovation activity, the lack of an appropriate source of finance and perceived excessive commercial risks are recognised barriers for eco-innovation, it is also known that the reduction of costs is one of the key reasons for companies and consumers to adopt eco-innovation. The European Innovation Platform for Eco-innovation shall bridge between the demand for and supply of environmentally friendly solutions, by addressing specific market failures that still hamper the wider take-up of eco-innovation.

The LMI as proposed by the Commission in December 2007 is a key priority of the Union’s broad-based innovation strategy. Different forms of eco-innovation were identified as main opportunities to accelerate the market introduction of new products and services. The LMI aims at combining different instruments such a s regulation, standardisation and public procurement with the view to creating more favourable framework conditions for innovation so as to accelerate the growth of emerging markets. In this context, it is essential to improve the innovation capacity of SM Es in order to fully seize the growth potential of the emerging markets. Innovation strongly depends on entrepreneurship, and innovative SMEs are essential to bring new business solutions faster to the market. The Eco-innovation-IP is designed to support the emerging eco-innovation markets, as identified by the LMI, by strengthening and better valorising the innovation potential of SMEs active in these fields. As a matter of principle, the proposal resulting from the evaluation as the best in each of the three LMI areas bio-based products, recycling and sustainable construction will be retained for funding, if it passes the evaluation threshold.

Furthermore, it is the ambition of the Eco-Innovation-IP to ensure better coherence between different Community initiatives in support of eco-innovation. The the Environmental Technologies Action Plan (ETAP), adopted by the Commission in 2004, aims also at the promotion of eco-innovation and market take-up of environmental technologies. In the report on the implementation of ETAP, adopted in May 2007, the Commission recommends to further develop tools and support to the increase in demand of eco-innovation, with a particular emphasis on sectors where large environmental yields can be made quickly. These sectors include buildings and recycling industries. The same report calls for the establishment of a strategic knowledge resource on eco-innovation, including a possible networked observatory on eco-innovation providing strategic and timely information on trends and opportunities in this field. The Eco-Innovation-IP will implement this recommendation, while will also support the further implementation of the LMI.

The implementation of the Eco-innovation-IP builds on successes obtained by the current generation of the Europe INNOVA initiative. The 1st generation of Europe INNOVA comprised several projects that pursued the goal of supporting eco-innovation by specific support policies. Projects in areas like renewable energy or sustainable construction generated new tools to assist SMEs with better access to finance, easier use of standards and more efficient networking, which were complemented by analyses of drivers and barriers of eco-innovation. The Eco-innovation-IP takes up lessons learned from those projects aiming at raising the efficiency of the support measures to eco-innovation. To further improve its impact, hitherto independently executed support measures shall be further streamlined towards common goals, requiring therefore closer cooperation between different inn ovation support mechanisms.

Building on previous insights makes it possible to gear the bundled efforts towards supplying new or better tools for supporting the innovation capacity of SMEs operating in priority areas as identified by the LMI and the ETAP. Such a targeted, bundled undertaking can only be mastered by partners who are strong on their own and committed to work together very closely. The Eco-innovation-IP will be formed by public-private partnerships that are committed to develop, test and validate new or better tools and instruments in support of eco-innovation. This takes the Europe INNOVA initiative one step further.

The Eco-innovation IP will mobilise innovative SMEs in support of the LMI. To spread the results to a wider eco-innovation community, the platform includes also a horizontal component that will help to further disseminate and underpin the results of the three sectoral partnerships that will be selected for funding. The dissemination of the results will be embedded in the communication system of the entire Europe INNOVA initiative that is established under the CIP-EIP work programme 2008, to benefit from the higher visibility of the large Europe INNOVA community.

This action will be implemented through an open Call for proposals, within the Europe INNOVA initiative. The partnerships should support the Eco-innovation-IP preferably in the LMI areas bio-based products, recycling and sustainable construction. As a matter of principle, only the most promising proposal for a given sector will be retained for funding. The horizontal actions will be also implemented through an open Call for proposals.

Objectives

The principal objective of the Eco-innovation-IP is to support the LMI and the further implementation of the ETAP by strengthening the innovation capacity of SMEs that are active in this area. Many European innovation policy initiatives such as PAXIS, Gate2Growth, Europe INNOVA, INNO-Actions under PRO INNO Europe or exploratory actions of the IRC network helped to identify elements of good practice in support of innovative companies, including knowledge transfer from universities to enterprises, incubation services and access to finance. Through the Eco-innovation-IP dedicated efforts will be undertaken to leverage such good practices more broadly into the mainstream of innovation support proved insufficient.

With the new generation of Europe INNOVA, the emphasis will shift from support to the identification and dissemination of good practice to the development and practical implementation of new or better tools through public-private partnerships that will help innovative SMEs to bring new products and services faster to emerging markets. In this respect, the Eco-innovation-IP will foster technological as well as non-technological innovation by addressing market failures and eliminating barriers to eco-innovation. It will help innovative SMEs to better exploit research results and to easier find investors and business partners, by enhancing entrepreneurial skills, providing better information about markets, regulations and standards, smoothening knowledge transfer and improving investment readiness.

The Eco-innovation-IP will achieve this by developing new or better tools and service concepts for innovation support that specifically address the needs of innovative SMEs in this sector with the ambition to grow and internationalise fast. In this sense, the Eco-innovation-IP will contribute to a modernisation of innovation support mechanisms for eco-innovation in Europe, with the objective to increase their efficiency and to lower administrative costs for SMEs. To further improve its impact, the Eco-innovation-IP will closely liaise with the Cluster-IP as a test bed for the new tools and instruments developed by its partners. This will further boost the implementation of the LMI, taking into account that clusters offer particularly fertile grounds for innovation and the emergence of new markets.

The potential benefits of the Eco-innovation-IP are twofold: Whereas the new or better tools and in struments in support of eco-innovation SMEs should be ultimately used and further implemented also by other service providers than those which constitute the Ecoinnovation-IP, such as notably the Enterprise Europe Network, a large number of innovative SME s will directly benefit from this activity. The new tools and instruments shall be tested under real life conditions in the field, involving as many innovative SMEs as possible. Hereby, new forms of innovation service delivery will come about, with the objective to better customise innovation support services to the specificities of eco-innovation and to reducing the administrative burdens for SMEs.