Environmental impacts of innovation

Overview

Principal Investigator - Paul Ekins
Duration of the project - Three and a half years
Sponsor - European Commission (Framework 7)
Amount of the grant- The grant for the project as a whole is £2.4 million Euros, of which UCL will receive 330,000 Euros.

EMInInn is a European collaborative research initiative examining the role of innovation in reducing environmental harm. The project brings together seven leading research institutions from across Europe, to examine how innovation has reduced environmental harm associated with five sectors: buildings, transport, information and communication technologies, energy and waste management. The project will develop new analytic tools for understanding the relationship between innovation and environmental degradation, and will apply these to prospective analysis, aiming to inform how Europe can harness the power of innovation for both economic prosperity and environmental sustainability.

People

Professor Paul Ekins
Will McDowall
Gabrial Anandarajah

Outputs

EMInInn will develop traditional academic outputs in the form of reports, conference papers and journal articles. In addition, we will be aiming to develop new analytic tools, both in terms of conceptual frameworks and modelling approaches.

Impact

EMInInn will feed into policy-making at the European level, through a series of stakeholder workshops and a high-level advisory committee. The project’s outputs will be highly policy-relevant, addressing the extent to which European commitments to innovation can facilitate meeting environmental goals.