Luxembourg’s Chamber of Commerce wants the country to be a eco-innovation leader. In a recent strategy blueprint, it set the goal for Luxembourg to become the top 3 in Europe in terms of environmental technologies by 2030.
To hit this goal, it needs to contribute more to environment-related technologies, boosting output from 0.04% of all new inventions to 01. or even .15% by 2030, the report finds.
What is more, the country must position itself as a “partner of choice for other economies in their ecological transition, via showcases presenting its eco-innovative solutions.”
Luxembourg has set ambitious environmental objectives, positioning itself as a centre for green finance and transforming its wastewater and material waste management
Yet, according to a 2020 performance review by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it remains one of the most carbon and material-intensive economies in the OECD. The report highlighted the problems of air pollution, congestion, urban sprawl, landscape fragmentation and agricultural pressures on biodiversity.
“This would result in a significant increase in the number of companies and jobs in the eco-technology sector”
Luxembourg chamber of commerce
How can tech help?
Following its competitiveness workshop project dedicated to environmental innovation, hosted in February 2022, the chamber of commerce has drawn up a list of 30 proposals, grouped under eight key recommendations:
- Build a national demonstrator of emerging eco-technologies, a place of experimentation accessible to all economic and research actors;
- Carry out a 360° mapping of the eco-innovation ecosystem and skills;
- Stimulate individual and collaborative eco-innovative solutions via a mission-led approach;
- Acting on the demand side via public procurement more focused on eco-innovation;
- Designing showcases for Luxembourg’s environmental technologies;
- Bringing together private and public actors within a Strategic Eco-Innovation Council;
- Found an eco-innovators’ club and democratise environmental innovation;
- Carry out a transversal pilot project on the monitoring of companies’ environmental data.
The chamber writes in a statement that these proposals aim to “develop environmental technologies in which Luxembourg could become a key player at the continental level. This would result in a significant increase in the number of companies and jobs in the eco-technology sector, the ecological transformation of a strengthened and more innovative industrial sector, as well as the success of Luxembourg as a true environmental laboratory at the heart of the European Union.”
The chamber will be responsible for implementing the initiatives with private and public sector support.