Brown Sunsets and Green Dawns in the Industrial Sector: Environmental Innovations, Firm Behavior and the European Emission Trading

We study the driving forces behind the adoption of environmental innovations (EI) in the Italian industry over 2006-2008 through analyses of the new wave of Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data that covered for the first time environmental innovation adoptions. We investigate whether the first phase of EU ETS has exerted some effects on environmental innovations by using a very large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. Estimates show that external forces and complementarity with other management practices are particularly relevant to increase the adoption of relatively new and radical technologies: relationships with other firms and institutions, local public funding, group membership are the key factors. The role of ETS on EI seems instead to be weak: it drives innovation if we compare ETS and non ETS firms, but the stringency itself does not matter, due to sector idiosyncratic factors and to the fact that stability of policy also matters.