Innovations and the Environment

This book Innovations and the Environment aims to review the state of knowledge and to provide an empirical basis for the development and use of new technologies, products and services to reduce the impact of human activities on environmental quality. This is at the core of the debate on economics and the environment. The message is optimistic. Advances in thinking and actions make it possible to maintain high environmental quality at reasonable costs, sometimes even having a positive effect on corporate results. The progress is by no means automatic. Risk taking by entrepreneurs, managers and policy makers is necessary. The idea to write a book about innovations and the environment was born during discussions with Professor Han Brezet who was convinced of the importance of this subject for engineering students. This is because he has found many stories about the successes and failures of environmental technologies and even more on the impact of technologies on environmental qualities, but no reviews on technology and the mindset of entrepreneurship to explain the forces that drive innovations for sustainable development. Dr Yoram Krozer is Director of the Cartesius Institute, the Institute for Sustainable Innovations of the Netherlands’ Technical Universities.