Companies in various industries are under growing pressure to assess the costs of decarbonizing their operations. This paper develops a generic abatement cost concept to identify the cost-efficient combination of technological and operational changes firms would need to implement to drastically...

Accounting for nearly 8% of global annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the cement industry is considered difficult to decarbonize. While a sizeable number of abatement levers for Portland cement production are technologically ready for deployment, many are still viewed as prohibitively...

The cost and revenue earnings potential of alternative power generation sources has shifted considerably in recent years. Here we introduce the concept of Levelized Profit Margins (LPM) to capture the changing unit economics of both intermittent and dispatchable generation technologies. We apply...

Energy efficiency regulation is an important driver for innovations in environmental technologies. Improvements of energy efficiency do not only contribute to reach envi-ronmental policy targets, they can be furthermore economically profitable. E.g. private households can reduce their costs in...

Much of the empirical literature analysing the relation between environmental innovation and competitiveness has focused on the question whether 'it pays to be green'. We differentiate between different types of environmental innovations, which will be disentangled in those aiming at reducing...

Significant policy effort is devoted to stimulate the development, adoption and diffusion of environmentally-friendly technology. Sceptics worry about the effects of regulation-induced environmental technology on firms' competitiveness. Since innovation is a crucial productivity driver, a...

The circular economy represents a systematic shift in production and consumption, aimed at extending the life cycle of products and materials while minimizing resource use and waste. Achieving the goals of the circular economy presents firms with the challenge of innovating new products,...

Policymakers regularly rely on public financial institutions and government bodies to provide loans to clean energy projects. However, the market failures that public loan provision addresses and the role it can play in a policy strategy that also features de-risking measures, such as interest...

Public procurement requirements and voluntary standards are increasingly used to foster environmental product innovations. However, quantitative evidence on their individual and joint effects is absent, and their conceptualization remains at an early stage. This paper makes two contributions....

Climate change can cause major challenges for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Responding and adapting to such challenges is crucial, as SMEs are vital for driving economic growth and employment in most countries. Investing in R&D is a key way in which SMEs can build the capacities...