Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
proceeding under a “bottom-up” approach, adding
up the objectives and actions that developed and
developing countries will undertake to reduce
their emissions. There is no overall international
architecture to ensure that the ultimate climate
objective enclosed in the agreement will be
reached
1
. Therefore, there is so far no common
view established and shared at the international
level of what a low-carbon transition implies for
worldwide economies
Sectoral and macro economic scenarios help
to frame a vision of the future where the pre-
conditioned hypothesis is the reduction of GHG
emissions by 2050 compatible with the limitation
of global warming to 2°C on the long term, under
an agreed assumption that this objective may en-
compass broader sustainability challenges. Under
these assumptions, some scenarios (Fonddri/
EPE joint research program 2008) show that on
the long term, many business opportunities are
maintained however they rely on a radical new
economic organization both in developed and
developing countries:
distances, the development of efficient in-
terconnexions or also the diffusion of non-
conventional vehicles.
New development choices on transport in-
frastructures, localization of activities, means of
mobility, consumption patterns, decentralized
energy systems or organization of production
systems proved to be, in these scenarios at least,
a better strategy to maintain growth on the long
term and avoid geopolitical tensions. However,
these development patterns are about to create
tensions on the economies on the short-term.
Whereas major economies have already paved the
way to settle low carbon strategies, their commit-
ment so far are not ambitious enough to stabilize
the vision of a new economic organization in the
future that will provide the framework to make all
the required innovations and businesses emerge.
One should not expect that all changes would
be shaped by business neither. It seems that it
is relevant to consider that there is an intricate
continuum between the public arena, business
decisions and the society evolution, each actor
pulling some drivers to transformation, in an
incremental and progressive interaction. The
challenge for businesses is therefore to be both
reactive to these changes and be part of the design
of new changes towards sustainability.
This overview raises the need to reconcile the
theoretical approaches focused on environmental
strategies design and possible benefits with some
broad economic representations based on the dif-
fusion and generalization of green business models
compatible with a low carbon pathway. To this
respect, an analysis focused on a sectoral approach
may help to scrutinize the specific context of each
key economic sector and isolate the existing or
missing factors that will ease the transition to new/
renewed business models. This chapter is therefore
devoted to a diagnostic at a sector level (energy,
automobile and sportswear activities), in the aim
to clarify how each sector envisages the transition
•
Broad technological innovations and de-
velopments of Low Carbon Technologies
in all economic sectors. In particular, a rap-
id diffusion of low emitting technologies
in transport, building and industry
•
Development and diffusion of new energy
technologies associated with Renewable,
nuclear and Carbon capture and storage
•
In building, the optimization of the design
of buildings (climatic architecture, diffu-
sion of low consumption buildings), the
increase in the share of renewables (an in
particular solar energy for heating and hot
water) or the optimization of energy in col-
lective housing through district heating
•
In transport, it supposes a relocalisation
of production and consumption activities,
radical changes in urban planning, the
steep decrease of the single use, a radical
