Opening the black box of environmental innovation. Governmental policy and learning in the Dutch paper and board industry

Abstract

Causes of climate change and potentials to realize energy savings are known, but insight into underlying learning, organisational, and behavioural processes affecting the application of these innovative potentials is lagging behind. There is a challenge to open the black box of environmental innovation. The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, we pursue a better understanding of the interaction of an industry with the government, and second a better understanding of the structuring of the underlying learning processes for environmental innovation and the interactions within these learning processes. This thesis focuses on the Dutch paper and board industry because of its highly energy intensive process of paper and board production and other environmental topics, namely waste water and waste, related to the production process of paper and board. Over the last decades different (types of) policy instruments have been implemented. There has been an accumulation of policy instruments. In the first empirical chapter we study the (relative) role of an industry association in the policy-making processes of these different policy instruments. The results show that the role is clearly different in policy-making processes of distinct types. In the case of interactive regulation the involvement of the industry is largest and smallest in the case of top-down regulation. In Chapter 4 we investigate these same sets of instruments to gain more insight into the way accumulation of policy measures affects research activities and eco-efficiency. These results show that in general an increase in policy pressure results in an improvement of eco-efficiency, with or without a time-lag. To obtain more insight into the effect of individual policy instruments we shift in Chapter 5 towards an agency perspective and study the adoption of CHP-installations. The results show that for paper and board factories environmental policies are relevant, yet it is only one of the influencing factors. The most important reason appeared to be the high energy price combined with the cost price reduction or the threat of regulation. With regard to policy instruments interactive regulations had the largest impact on CHP adoption, and positive economic instruments are important as a stimulus. In Chapter 6 the process of engaging external partners during the adoption and implementation of these CHP-installations (i.e. how they organized their learning structure) is central. The results show that a learning structure that focuses on the acquisition of external knowledge in addition to supplier relations and own knowledge is more likely if the internal resource base is weak and if the technological complexity is larger. Chapter 7 shifts to the intra-project level and studies the effects of volatility of inputs on trial-and-error learning in the case of a knowledge generation project by means of a process approach. The results show that suboptimal performance of partners is best to be avoided because this will result in negative outcomes and the other way around. Furthermore, the results show that volatility of the network increases the likelihood of less modification of the action course, suboptimal performance and the exit of project members. After opening the black box of environmental innovation, we conclude that environmental innovation is a challenge: for industry, politics and innovation science!