Substudy 21: Environmental Policy as Part of a Growth Strategy

Environmental policy as part of a growth strategy concentrates on issues that support structural change towards an environmentally sound development. The analysis identifies approaches for integrating environmental policy into other policy areas, such as technology and research policy, energy and transport policy. Accordingly, environmental policy increasingly appears as a pivot of any growth and employment strategy. The positive effects of environmental policy strategies are derived, on the one hand, indirectly from the avoidance of negative external effects (reducing ecological repair costs and other macroeconomic costs such as health care costs) and, on the other hand, from direct positive growth and employment effects in the field of environmental technology. A key role is played by energy strategies (especially energy efficiency, renewable energy) that, for one, contribute to reducing negative ecological effects (anthropogenous climate change, emissions of other air pollutants) and, on the other hand, through improving supply security and reducing the dependence on imported fossil fuels, contribute to raising competitiveness.