Environmental Technologies
Background
There is a long-held perception that environmental protection is costly for business and that environmental degradation is a necessary, if undesirable, consequence of economic growth.
However, the use of environmental technologies can break this link – they can drive innovation, bring new business and job opportunities, open up developing markets and enhance competitiveness whilst simultaneously contributing to environmental objectives.
In 2003 the Prime Ministers of the UK and Sweden composed a joint letter to the Presidency of the EU, to raise the issue of the need to stimulate markets for environmental technologies:
This helped to initiate the development of the EU Environmental Technologies Action Plan (ETAP).
Defra takes the lead in the UK on ETAP implementation through its Environmental Technologies Unit.
Two other units, jointly sponsored by Defra and the Department for Trade and Industry, have been created from the Joint Environmental Markets Unit to better encourage innovation in the environmental industries sector:
-
Environmental Industries Sector Unit (EISU) in UK trade and investment has responsibility for promoting the UK environmental industry overseas.
-
Environmental Industries Unit (EIU) is a joint DTI/Defra unit which promotes the environmental goods and services sector in the UK. Useful information including a study of the Emerging Markets in the Environmental Sector and the Environmental Innovation Advisory Group (EIAG)'s first report Environmental Innovation: bridging the gap between environmental necessity and economic opportunity can be found on the EIU's pages on the DTI website.
Further information is available on our Help page about downloading or reading Adobe Acrobat 
documents.
Page last modified: 9 December 2005
Page published: 30 April
2004