Policy Options for a Resource-Efficient Economy (POLFREE)

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UCL ISR is leading this six-institute project, which will construct a theoretical framework for the analysis of resource efficiency, with detailed comparison of the trends and policies at EU and Member State level, and an analysis of business barriers to resource efficiency, thereby developing an enhanced understanding of the drivers of inefficient resource use (work package 1).

This will lead to an exploration of new concepts and paradigms that can bring about a radical increase in resource efficiency, and a vision for a resource-efficient economy in the EU, with suggestions also for new more resource-efficient business models for firms, and ideas for a global governance regime that can promote resource-efficient economies among the EU's trading partners and more widely will be explored (work package 2).

This will lead to intensive work on creating, modeling and vsiualising scenarios for the emergence of resource-efficient economies, through linking quantitative economic and ecological models and simulating scenarios through the policies and policy mixes derived in the earlier work (work package 3).

The project forms part of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

As project leaders UCL has responsibility for the overall project management and co-ordination of the project. In addition they have provided scientific contributions to key deliverables on:

• Global governance for resource-efficient economies (PDF)

• Synthesis of new concepts (PDF)