Eco-innovation details a product that encourages a lower utilization of natural resources and works to eliminate the release of dangerous materials into the environment. When looking at Greece specifically, the country needs to have an emphasis on its environmental policies due to the many islands it encompasses. Especially because much of their economy is credited due to the high levels of tourism it experiences every year. Both renewable energy such as the large amount of windmills seen on the islands and energy efficiency help the eco-innovation within Greece. Looking at the eco-innovation index, Greece is around seven places lower than the EU average most notably due to its eco-innovation outputs, resource efficiency, and socio-economic outputs. The country has difficulties increasing its eco-innovation due to struggles in the economy, negative technological trade balance, low educational performance, administrative barriers, low funding, and mixed public attitudes. Greece has clear next steps to take to tackle all of their low-performing areas that lower the eco-innovation. Focusing in on their strengths can help to strengthen their economy which can assist in creating plans and initiatives for improvement. Some ways that Greece grows in eco-innovation are due to its growing capital in renewable energies, increase in tourism industries, and innovations regarding food and agriculture. Greece has increased its eco-innovation in many fields due to small transitions. As energy efficiency is named a strong field for them, solar energy has benefitted this due to the installation of photovoltaics that covered a large amount of the total energy consumption. Greece truly became a pioneer in this field as this installation ended up bringing them to rank second in the world in electricity generation. There is still more improvement being made as research in various energy advances is being studied in many universities and funded projects are being carried out. Eco-innovation is all about new products being made to help the environment and research studies coupled with possible breakthroughs will be beneficial to growing the overall advances of Greece. Even the government is assisting to bring up one of the country’s lowest scoring indexes which are in the digital economy and society. The initiative in this field, powered by the Greek government, is digitization with a leading mission to convert Greece into ‘digital by default’ by 2023. Higher powers with more funding are a great way to quickly assist a problem area by setting clear plans within a specific timeframe. More initiatives similar to this will help to transition Greece to a higher level of eco-innovation.
Eco-Innovation in Greece: Lauren Rapavy
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