Clean Technology Transfer Research Articles

Nexus between Innovation–Openness–Natural Resources–Environmental Quality in N-11 Countries: What Is the Role of Environmental Tax?

This research investigates the intricate relationship between financial openness, natural resources, and carbon neutrality in the N-11 countries. It provides insights into how environmental tax and innovation can drive carbon neutrality in these nations, thus advancing our understanding of the nexus among financial openness, natural resources, and carbon neutrality. The study aims to offer policymakers perspectives on formulating policies to foster sustainable economic development and environmental conservation in the N-11 nations. The discourse highlights the environmental implications of foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade openness, revealing a complex interplay between economic development, technological innovation, and environmental sustainability. While FDI can facilitate technological transfers and managerial advancements that enhance resource efficiency and promote environmentally friendly practices, its environmental impact varies based on regulatory frameworks and enforcement mechanisms. In countries with weak environmental regulations, FDI may lead to negative outcomes such as pollution hotspots, resource depletion, and ecosystem degradation. Similarly, trade openness can exacerbate environmental degradation through increased production, energy consumption, and waste generation. However, both FDI and trade openness can contribute positively to environmental sustainability when coupled with effective environmental policies, investment in green technology, and the promotion of sustainable practices. Thus, policymakers must strike a balance between economic development and environmental protection by implementing stringent environmental regulations, promoting clean technology transfer, and fostering sustainable development practices domestically and internationally. This research offers valuable insights for policymakers aiming to navigate the complexities of achieving carbon neutrality while ensuring sustainable economic growth in the N-11 countries.

Clean technology transfer for climate change mitigation: mechanisms and barriers -with reference to Algeria-

clean technology transfer for climate change mitigation: mechanisms and barriers -with reference to Algeria-

Developing a multidimensional assessment framework for clean technology transfer potential and its application on the Belt and Road Initiative countries

The transfer of industrial clean technology can contribute to the transformation of industry sustainable development to address the dual challenges of climate change and environmental pollution. Although its importance is widely acknowledged, there is still a lack of scientific and quantitative assessment framework to precisely and effectively identify high-potential cooperation targets in the context of countries with diverse backgrounds. To fill this gap, this study proposed a multidimensional assessment framework for industrial clean technology transfer potential with application in 58 BRI developing countries. This study reviewed existing literature on the main barriers and drivers of clean technology transfer and extracted four assessment dimensions as primary indicators, namely the recipient country's macro environment, industry development, clean technology demand, and clean technology transfer guarantee, with 13 secondary indicators, 52 tertiary indicators based on the open-source database and common assessment index. The established framework was then used to assess the potential for China's industrial clean technology transfer to 58 developing countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, with the weights of indicators at all levels determined by the analytic hierarchy process method based on expert questionnaires and equal weighting method. The findings demonstrate that there are significant differences in clean technology transfer potential among studied countries. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia are the best options for China, while Bolivia, Cameroon, and Algeria have the lowest technology transfer potential. Our work can not only assist technology providers with overall country selection in industrial cleaner technology transfer cooperation and strengthen their risk prevention capacity, but also help countries with low cooperation potential or obvious weaknesses to identify deficiencies and make targeted improvements, as well as serve as a reference for other international technology cooperation assessments.

Can corruption encourage clean technology transfer?

AbstractWe study the impact of environmental regulation on the transfer of a clean technology where bureaucrats are needed for government intervention. In the absence of corruption, when environmental taxes are low, a technology transfer always takes place and it increases total outputs, but may lead to higher pollution levels. However, when corruption is possible, a firm with a dirty technology may choose to bribe a corruptible bureaucrat who will underreport the actual level of emissions, thereby hindering the transfer of clean technology. We show that a less strict anticorruption policy may lead to more bribing, but encourage technology transfers. Moreover, an environment‐oriented government would set a deterrent environmental tax to reduce pollution, while an output‐oriented government would set a minimum tax rate to eliminate corruption and induce technology transfers. However, a balanced government would tolerate corruption when the cost of bribing is low and the clean technology is sufficiently efficient.

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Affordable housing and clean technology transfer in construction firms in Brazil

The affordable housing deficit in Brazil is 5.6 million homes. The Main Brazilian housing government program was called “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” from 2009 to 2020. It had little progress in the housing sustainability requirements in the last ten years. For that reason, construction industry has very little changed in terms of innovation. However, this sector has maintained standard production on a large scale. So, the crucial change could become from companies. The clean technology transfer is limited in the Brazilian affordable housing firms. One solution is to analyse this transfer process like a network. Then, it will be possible to evaluate the technological adaptability of these kinds of construction firms. This research aimed to estimate the clean technology transfer between construction firms in Brazil dedicated to building affordable housing. For this, it was identified the 69 construction firms in five cities of Rio Grande do Sul. The cities were Canoas, Caxias do Sul, Passo Fundo, Pelotas, Porto Alegre. Then, a network analysis identified the degree, betweenness, closeness, and density. These studies identify poor performance versus sustainability needs of current low-cost construction. As a result, it identifies the technology transfer capabilities that allow medium-term gains for Brazilian construction firms. Finally, we developed technology transfer indicators to understand the complexity of affordable housing production in Brazil.

Clean Technology Transfer and Innovation in Social Housing Production in Brazil and Colombia. A Framework from a Systematic Review

Over recent years in Brazil and Colombia, the social housing programs of these two countries have increasingly become directly related to the concept of green construction and seek to integrate with their respective laws. For example, a series of technological strategies allows bought countries to guarantee a reduction of the environmental impact of traditional construction technologies. Therefore, these actions try to answer the problems in the design of dwellings in Latin America. However, the construction sector reduced productivity and limited innovation in business. Some of the technological management processes in the social housing construction sector only consider the implementation of clean technologies tangentially. This situation is mainly because of general policies since they do not consider different local contexts. It is then worth asking: What impact do the processes of transfer of clean technologies have on social housing in Brazil and Colombia? This systematic review was carried out on scientific papers indexed by the science database from 2013 to 2019. The PRISMA method was applied to this review with an aim to propose a conceptual model for the transfer of clean technology in the production of social housing in Brazil and Colombia. Finally, we identify that the impact of clean technologies transfer on social housing is very low in these two countries.

Raising Climate Ambition: A Resolution for a Green New Deal

A number of Nobel Laureates in economics have been grappling with the problem of research, development, and transfer of clean technologies in order to tackle the climate crisis. Joseph Stiglitz has been investigating how intellectual property laws could be recalibrated and redesigned to better account for sustainable development and climate change. Stiglitz and his collaborators have argued: ‘A substantial recalibration of the international approach to Intellectual Property Rights is required to ensure the advancement of the standards of living and well-being of the entire world.’ In their view, ‘As the world continues to move towards greater integration and becomes more interdependent and faces up to the pressing challenge posed by our co-dependencies on each other, including global public health and climate change, these reforms will become more urgent.’ Another Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus has also been focused upon the best public policy options to promote the adoption of clean technologies. In his 2018 Nobel Lecture in Economics, Nordhaus stressed that ‘people must understand the gravity of global warming’, engage in ‘intensive research’ and resist ‘false and tendentious reasoning.’ He insisted that: ‘Nations must raise the price of CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions.’ Nordhaus also maintained that ‘policies must be global and not just national or local.’ He believes that ‘the best hope for effective coordination is a climate club.’ In his view, ‘rapid technological change in the energy sector is essential.’ In this context, Brown seeks to address one of the profound challenges of our time – namely, achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy to address the wicked global problems of climate change. This foreword considers three key dimensions of the contribution of Brown’s book, Intellectual Property, Climate Change and Technology. First, it explores the work as a response to the need for global climate action in the wake of the Paris Agreement 2015. Second, the foreword examines how the book considers new legal, regulatory and administrative frameworks to address climate change. Third, it examines the focus of the book upon climate litigation as a means of encouraging government and corporate action in respect of climate change. Brown seeks to push for greater climate ambition in international agreements; in national policy; and in the courts.

The Clean development mechanism

The Clean development mechanism (CDM) is a new tool for promoting sustainable development in developing countries. It was established by the Kyoto Protocol under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It promises developed countries certified emission reductions (CERs) if they comply with their quantified emission targets and developing countries sustainable development benefits if they participate and invest in clean renewable technologies. Energy development through investments in clean technology transfer can contribute to sustainable development. However, sustainable development will only be achieved if current barriers and gaps facing CDM project implementation in Kenya are mitigated or removed altogether paving way for the development of more CDM projects in Kenya.

Unilateral Climate Policy and Foreign Direct Investment with Firm and Country Heterogeneity

We analyse the effects of unilateral climate policy in a two-country two-firm model, with endogenous plant location and heterogeneity in both country size and firm’s characteristics. The effectiveness of unilateral climate policy is shown to depend on the joint effect of country and firm heterogeneity, and on their impact on equilibrium location choice. For being effective and not leading to production relocation in the long-run, unilateral climate policy should be moderate, implemented by a sufficiently larger area and complemented by mechanisms promoting the international transfer of clean technologies. The model indicates that the smaller area cannot take the lead in global climate mitigation for a protracted time period. Finally, when the local community is not environmentally concerned, the unilateral policy unambiguously makes the society worse off.

Explaining differences in sub-national patterns of clean technology transfer to China and India

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has the capacity to incentivize the international transfer of environmentally sound technologies. Given that both countries are expected to have similar incentives when managing the distribution of technology transfer within the country, why do sub-national patterns in the allocation of projects with technology transfer differ? Using comparable political–economic data compiled for China and India, we offer an explanation for these differences. In China, where the government regards the CDM as a tool for achieving sustainable development, technology transfer is concentrated in provinces that need it the most and that are most conducive to receiving transfers (i.e., economically less developed, yet heavily industrialized provinces). In India, where the government takes on a “laissez-faire” approach to the CDM, neither level of economic development nor that of industrialization affects clean technology transfer. In this regard, although the incentives are similar, the capacity to pursue them is not comparable. We test these hypotheses using data on CDM technology transfer across Chinese provinces and Indian states during the 6-year period from 2004 to 2010.

Unilateral Climate Policy and Foreign Direct Investment with Firm and Country Heterogeneity

We contribute to the debate on the impact of unilateral climate policy with a two-country two-firm international oligopoly model accounting for endogenous plant location and heterogeneity in both country size and firm’s emissions technology. Our results suggest that, if the carbon price differential is moderate as compared to unit transport costs and the relative size of the highly regulated country is big enough, a no relocation equilibrium may prevail also in the long run. A large market asymmetry coupled with a small technology gap emerges as the only configuration in which unilateral climate policy leads to a fall in world emissions irrespective of the optimal location choice. Thus for being effective and not leading to production relocation, unilateral climate policy should be moderate, implemented by a sufficiently large area and complemented by mechanisms for promoting the international transfer of clean technologies. Welfare implications are also discussed.

Justice and cost effectiveness of consumption-based versus production-based approaches in the case of unilateral climate policies

In recent years, climate policy under the United Nations system has been characterized by bottom-up, national approaches to climate mitigation. This raises concerns about the overall effectiveness of these mitigation policies, for example due to carbon leakage. In response to these concerns, authors have repeatedly suggested that policy makers consider a consumption-based climate policy approach. We analyze the potential merits of a switch to a consumption-based policy approach using the criteria of justice and economic efficiency. We argue that emissions must be understood as being contributed by both, consumers and producers, but that this fact does not by itself settle the question whether consumption or production ought to serve as the climate policy base. Rather, the perspective of justice necessitates an analysis of the distributive consequences of switching from a production- to a consumption-based policy.We find that both (global) cost-effectiveness and justice can be improved if the unilateral climate policies of industrialized countries are based on emissions from consumption. There are preconditions, however, the switch in the policy base must be accompanied by clean technology transfer, and if implemented by border carbon adjustments, import tax revenues need to be channeled to developing and emerging economies. We further show that in such a setting, export rebates are of minor importance for efficiency and justice.

Governance and technology transfer in the Clean Development Mechanism in India

Despite significant technological advances in emerging economies, the further development of clean energy technologies in developing countries remains crucial to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with economic development. In this paper we address two significant gaps in the growing body of literature that has assessed the role of the Clean Development Mechanism in promoting the transfer of clean technologies to developing countries. First, we present a qualitative analysis of the governance of the Clean Development Mechanism in India. This provides a basis for understanding the extent to which and the ways in which governance may impact upon the likelihood that projects promote technology transfer. Second, we provide a novel quantification of the level and nature of technology transfer that has occurred in Indian Clean Development Mechanism projects, based on insights from literature on technological capability building. We find that the Clean Development Mechanism in India has produced a negligible number of projects that promote technology transfer if technology transfer is understood as a process of learning about technology. Together these qualitative and quantitative analyses show how politics and governance have contributed to the current form of the Clean Development Mechanism market in India, in which processes of building indigenous technological capabilities have been neglected.

EL MECANISMO DE DESARROLLO LIMPIO, APORTES A LA CONSERVACIÓN DE ESCOSISTEMAS Y DESARROLLO REGIONAL

<p>El Mecanismo de Desarrollo Limpio (MDL) es uno de los acuerdos suscritos en el Protocolo de Kyoto, desarrollado para lograr los objetivos de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC) y ayudar a los países industrializados a alcanzar sus compromisos de mitigación de Gases Efecto Invernadero. El MDL involucra a países en desarrollo, contribuye con la mitigación del cambio climático, la inversión en diferentes sectores económicos, y la transferencia de tecnologías limpias, apoyando el desarrollo sostenible de las regiones. En este sentido, el artículo recoge temas relacionados con este mecanismo y su papel en la conservación de ecosistemas, su asociación con la sostenibilidad y su aplicación e implementación en Colombia.</p><p><strong>Palabras claves:</strong> Cambio climático, Mecanismos de desarrollo limpio, Protocolo de Kyoto, Sumideros de carbono, Servicios ambientales.</p>

External sources of clean technology: Evidence from the Clean Development Mechanism

New technology is fundamental to sustainable development. However, inventors from industrialized countries often refuse technology transfer because they worry about reverse-engineering. When can clean technology transfer succeed? We develop a formal model of the political economy of North–South technology transfer. According to the model, technology transfer is possible if (1) the technology in focus has limited global commercial potential or (2) the host developing country does not have the capacity to absorb new technologies for commercial use. If both conditions fail, inventors from industrialized countries worry about the adverse competitiveness effects of reverse-engineering, so technology transfer fails. Data analysis of technology transfer in 4,894 projects implemented under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism during the 2004–2010 period provides evidence in support of the model.

Potential Threats to Patent Rights in Climate-Friendly Technologies

The transfer of climate-friendly technologies from developed countries to developing countries has been identified in international forums as a key factor in efforts to mitigate climate change. Commentators and negotiators have argued, however, that efforts to transfer climate-friendly technologies from developed countries to developing countries have fallen far short of what is needed. Although a host of barriers play a role in the pace of transfer of clean technologies, such as lack of financial resources, inadequate infrastructure, trade barriers, and lack of skilled workers to name a few, intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been accused of being a particularly significant barrier. Developing countries have made strong proposals to severely curtail IPRs on clean technologies, particularly patent rights. These proposals present potential threats to patent rights on clean technologies in developing countries and include expanded compulsory licensing, excluding clean technologies from patenting, and revoking existing patent rights on clean technologies in developing countries. The motivation for such proposals stem largely from theoretical considerations, when, in fact, recent studies provide evidence that patent rights are not a barrier to the transfer of clean technologies to the developing world and, to the contrary, are more likely facilitating the diffusion of clean technologies in developing countries.

Clean technology transfer: a case study from the South African metal finishing industry, 2000–2005

The article describes the uptake of cleaner technology to the metal finishing sector in South Africa. Cultural determinants in uptake process are emphasized and strategies to foster uptake are presented: regulatory instruments, communication, training, cleaner technology assessments and subsidy. Results from the period 2000–2005 comprise: more than 12 full-scale demonstration plants were built with best available cleaner technology (BAT) with a pay back time of 1.8 years; design and testing of a cleaner production apprentice education programme; set-up of 3 industrial associations, which have merged into a commercial sustainable nationwide association. A regional environmental authority has developed capabilities for stimulating cleaner technology diffusion and sharpened its regulatory instruments meeting international level.

The main challenges after Kyoto

The two main challenges in the post-2012 period are to bring the United States back into the negotiation and to find ways to associate the developing countries in the common reduction effort. The United States vision is presently very focused on technological issues. This often seems to conflict with the European point of view which focuses on emission trading schemes. Thus a first challenge is to reconcile those two visions and develop a common understanding of how to accelerate research on climate change technologies. Regarding the developing countries issue, the main challenge is to accelerate the transfer of clean technologies into those countries, in order to alter their emissions trajectories in the long run. The Clean Development Mechanism will not be enough ; new instruments and new modalities of association with those countries will have to be developed within the post-2012 framework. JEL classification : Q53, Q54, Q58

Que faire après Kyoto ? Les principaux enjeux

The main challenges in the post-Kyoto period The two main challenges in the post 2012 period are to bring the United States back into the negotiation and to find ways to associate the developing countries in the common reduction effort. The United States vision is presently very focused on technological issues. This often seems to conflict with the European point of view which focuses on emission trading schemes. Thus a first challenge is to reconcile those two visions and develop a common understanding of how to accelerate research on climate change technologies. Regarding the developing countries issue, the main challenge is to accelerate the transfer of clean technologies into those countries, in order to alter their emissions trajectories in the long run. The Clean Development Mechanism will not be enough ; new instruments and new modalities of association with those countries will have to be developed within the post 2012 framework. JEL classification : Q53, Q54, Q58